DIVINE POEMS: WHAT PROFITETH A MAN OF ALL HIS LABOUR ... by JOHN HALL (1627-1656)

I

EVEN as the wandering traveller doth stray,
Led from his way
By a false fire, whose flame to cheated sight
Doth lead aright,
All paths are footed over, but that one
Which should be gone;
Even so my foolish wishes are in chase
Of everything, but what they should embrace.

II

We laugh at children, that can when they please
A bubble raise,
And, when their fond ambition sated is,
Again dismiss
The fleeting toy into its former air:
What do we here,
But act such tricks? Yet thus we differ: they
Destroy, so do not we; we sweat, they play.

III

Ambition's towerings do some gallants keep
From calmer sleep;
Yet when their thoughts the most possessed are,
They grope but air;
And when they're highest, in an instant fade
Into a shade;
Or like a stone, that more forc'd upwards, shall
With greater violence to its centre fall.

IV

Another, whose conceptions only dream
Monsters of fame,
The vain applause of other madmen buys
With his own sighs;
Yet his enlarged name shall never crawl
Over this ball,
But soon consume; thus doth a trumpet's sound
Rush bravely on a little, then's not found.

V

But we as soon may tell how often shapes
Are chang'd by apes,
As know how oft man's childish thoughts do vary,
And still miscarry.
So a weak eye in twilight thinks it sees
New species,
While it sees nought; so men in dreams conceive
Of sceptets, till that waking undeceive.

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