For me, I do Nature unidle know,
And know great causes great effects procure,
And know, those bodies high rule o'er the low;
And if these rules did fail, proof makes me sure,—
Who oft forejudge my after-following race
By only those two stars in Stella's face.
In what follows, concerning the powers and bodily nature of man, Ralegh uses what was a commonplace of his period, but expresses this quaint conceit with more grace than was customary, and closes it with that touch of regret so familiar in him, though in expression he may borrow from the Sicilian lament of Moschus for Bion. And so poetical is his prose at times, that Thoreau very properly calls the passage on the decay of oracles a "poem." [F. B. Sanborn.]
From Thoreau's second draft of the MS.
7. Aubrey says, "I well remember his study [at Durham-house] which was on a little turret that looked into and over the Thames, and had the prospect, which is as pleasant, perhaps, as any in the world, and which not only refreshes the eie-sight, but cheers the spirits, and (to speake my mind) I believe enlarges an ingeniose man's thoughts." Perhaps it was here that he composed some of his poems.
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