William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Restoration Verse. 1910.
For ThoughtsThomas Flatman (16371688)
T
They are my constant friends,
Who, when harsh Fate its dull brow bends,
Uncloud me with a smiling ray,
And in the depth of midnight force a day.
The busy throngs of company
To hug myself in privacy,
O the discourse—the pleasant talk
’Twixt us, my thoughts, along a lonely walk!
The dying malefactors sip
With trembling lip,
T’ abate the rigour of their doom
By a less troublous cut to their long home)
Make me slight crosses, though they piled up lie,
All by the magic of an ecstasy.
The throne and awful majesty
Of that proud one,
Brother and uncle to the stars and sun?
These can conduct me where such toys reside
And waft me ’cross the main, sans wind and tide.
Those radiant mansions ’bove the sky,
Invisible to mortal eye,
My thoughts can easily lay
A shining track thereto,
And nimbly flitting go;
Through all the eleven orbs can shove a way.
My thoughts like Jacob’s ladder are
A most angelic thoroughfare.
In th’ oriental mines;
Those sparkling gems which Nature keeps
Within her cabinets, the deeps;
The verdant fields,
Those rarities the rich world yields,
Huge structures, whose each gilded spire
Glisters like lightning, which while men admire
They deem the neighbouring sky on fire—
These can I dwell upon and ’live mine eyes
With millions of varieties.
As on the front of Pisgah I
Can th’ Holy Land through these my optics spy.
The peevish rage of men,
Whose violence can ne’er divorce
Our mutual amity,
Or lay so damned a curse
As non-addresses ’twixt my thoughts and me;
For though I sigh in irons, they
Use their old freedom, readily obey,
And, when my bosom friends desert me, stay.
My privilege; make known
The high prerogative I own,
By making all allurements give you place,
Whose sweet society to me
A sanctuary and a shield shall be
’Gainst the full quivers of my Destiny.