An ell of silk, and heaven's wide-spreading tent.
22 As then the soul a substance hath alone,
Besides the body in which she's confined;
So hath she not a body of her own,
But is a spirit, and immaterial mind.
23 Since body and soul have such diversities,
Well might we muse how first their match began;
But that we learn, that He that spread the skies,
And fix'd the earth, first form'd the soul in man.
24 This true Prometheus first made man of earth,
And shed in him a beam of heavenly fire;
Now in their mothers' wombs, before their birth,
Doth in all sons of men their souls inspire.
25 And as Minerva is in fables said,
From Jove, without a mother, to proceed;
So our true Jove, without a mother's aid,
Doth daily millions of Minervas breed.
[1] That it cannot be a body.
GILES FLETCHER.
Giles Fletcher was the younger brother of Phineas, and died twenty-three
years before him. He was a cousin of Fletcher the dramatist, and the son
of Dr Giles Fletcher, who was employed in many important missions in the
reign of Queen Elizabeth, and, among others, negotiated a commercial
treaty with Russia greatly in the favour of his own country.
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