But virtue join'd with riches and long life;
In corporal pleasure he, and careless ease:
The Stoic last in philosophic pride,

By him call'd virtue; and his virtuous man,
Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing,
Equals to God, oft shames not to prefer;
As fearing God nor man, contemning all
Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life,
Which, when he lists, he leaves, or boasts he can
For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,
Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.

Alas, what can they teach, and not mislead,
Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,
And how the world began, and how man fell,
Degraded by himself, on grace depending?
Much of the soul they talk, but all awry,
And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves
All glory arrogate, to God give none,
Rather accuse him under usual names,
Fortune and fate, as one regardless quite

Of mortal things. Who therefore seeks in these
True wisdom, finds her not; or, by delusion
Far worse, her false resemblance only meets,
An empty cloud. However, many books,
Wise men have said, are wearisome: who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
(And what he brings, what needs he else where seek
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,

Deep vers'd in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys,

And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge;

As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
Or if I would delight my private hours
With music or with poem, where so soon
As in our native language can I find

That solace? All our law and story strew'd

With hymns, our psalms with artful terms inscrib'd.
Our Hebrew songs and harps in Babylon,
E.

That pleas'd so well our victor's ear, declare
That rather Greece from us these arts deriv'd;
Ill imitated, while they loudest sing

The vices of their deities, and their own,
In fable, hymn, or song, so personating

Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.
Remove their swelling epithets, thick laid
As varnish on a harlot's cheek, the rest,
Thin sown with aught of profit or delight,
Will far be found unworthy to compare
With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling,
Where God is prais'd aright, and godlike men,
The holiest of holies, and his saints;

Such are from God inspir'd; not such from thee,
Unless where moral virtue is express'd
By light of nature not in all quite lost.
Their orators thou then extoll'st, as those
The top of eloquence; statists, indeed,
And lovers of their country, as may seem:
But herein to our profits far beneath,
As men divinely taught, and better teaching
The solid rules of civil government,
In their majestic unaffected style,

Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.
In them is plainest taught, and easiest learn'd,
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so;
What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat:
These only with our law best form a king.

So spake the son of God: but Satan now,
Quite at a loss, for all his darts were spent,
Thus to our Saviour with stern brow replied:
Since neither wealth, nor honour, arms nor arts,
Kingdom nor empire, pleases thee, nor aught
By me propos'd in life contemplative,
Or active, tended on by glory, or fame,
What dost thou in this warld? the wilderness
For thee is fittest place; I found thee there,
And thither will return thee; yet remember
What I foretel thee; soon thou shalt have cause

To wish thou never hadst rejected thus
Nicely or cautiously my offer'd aid,

Which would have set thee in short time with ease
On David's throne, or throne of all the world,

Now at full age, fulness of time, thy season,
When prophecies of thee are best fulfill'd.
Now contrary, if I read aught in heaven,

Or heaven write aught of fate, by what the stars
Voluminous, or single characters,

In their conjunction met, give me to spell;
Sorrows and labours, opposition, hate
Attends thee, scorns, reproaches, injuries,
Violence and stripes, and lastly, cruel death:
A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom
Real or allegoric, I discern not,

Nor when, eternal sure, as without end,
Without beginning; for no date prefix'd
Directs me in the starry rubric set.

So saying, he took (for still he knew his power
Not yet expir'd) and to the wilderness

Brought back the Son of God, and left him there,
Feigning to disappear. Darkness now rose,
As day-light sunk, and brought in lowering night,
Her shadowy offspring, unsubstantial both,
Privation mere of light and absent day.
Our Saviour, meek, and with untroubled mind,
After his airy jaunt, though hurried sore,
Hungry and cold, betook him to his rest,
Wherever, under some concourse of shades,

Whose branching arms thick intertwin'd might shield,
From dews and damps of night his shelter'd head,
But shelter'd slept in vain; for at his head
The Tempter watch'd, and soon with ugly dreams
Disturb'd his sleep and either tropic now
'Gan thunder, and both ends of heaven, the clouds,
From many a horrid rift abortive, pour'd
Fierce rain with lightning mix'd, water with fire
In ruin reconcil'd: nor slept the winds
Within their stony caves, but rush'd abroad

From the four hinges of the world, and fell
On the vex'd wilderness, whose tallest pines,
Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest oaks,
Bow'd their stiff necks, loaded with stormy blasts,
Or torn up sheer; ill wast thou shrouded then,
O patient Son of God, yet only stood'st
Unshaken nor yet stay'd the terror there;
Infernal ghosts and hellish furies round
Environ'd thee; some howl'd, some yell'd, some
shriek'd,

Some bent at thee their fiery darts, while thou
Sat'st unappall'd in calm and sinless peace:
Thus pass'd the night so foul, till morning fair
Come forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray,
Who with her radiant finger still'd the roar
Of thunder, chas'd the clouds, and laid the winds,
And grisly spectres, which the fiend had rais'd
To tempt the Son of God with terrors dire.
And now the sun with more effectual beams
Had cheer'd the face of earth, and dried the wet
From drooping plant, or drooping tree; the birds,
Who all things now behold more fresh and green
After a night of storm so ruinous,

Clear'd up their choicest notes in bush and spray,
To gratulate the sweet return of morn:
Nor yet amidst this joy and brightest morn
Was absent, after all his mischief done,
The Prince of Darkness glad would also seem
Of this fair change, and to our Saviour came,
Yet with no new device, they all were spent:
Rather by this his last affront resolv'd,
Desp'rate of better course, to vent his rage
And mad despite to be so oft repell'd.
Him walking on a sunny hill he found,
Back'd on the north and west by a thick wood;
Out of the wood he starts in wonted shape,
And in a careless mood thus to him said:

Fair morning yet betides thee, Son of God,
After a dismal night: I heard the wrack

As earth and sky would mingle; but myself
Was distant; and these flaws, though mortals fear

them

As dang'rous to the pillar'd frame of heaven,
Or to the earth's dark basis underneath,
Are to the main as inconsiderable

And harmless, if not wholesome, as a sneeze

To man's less universe, and soon are gone;
Yet as being oft times noxious where they light
On man, beast, plant, wastful and turbulent,
Like turbulencies in th' affairs of men,

Over whose heads they roar and seem to point,
They oft fore-signify and threaten ill:
This tempest at this desert most was bent;
Of men at thee, for only thou here dwell'st.
Did I not tell thee, if thou didst reject
The perfect season offer'd with my aid
To win thy destin'd seat, but wilt prolong
All to the push of fate pursue thy way,

Of gaining David's throne no man knows when,
For both the when and how is no where told,
Thou shalt be what thou art ordain'd, no doubt;
For angels have proclaim'd it, but concealing
The time and means: each act is rightliest done,
Not when it must, but when it may be best.
If thou observe not this, be sure to find
What I foretold thee, many an hard assay
Of dangers, and adversities, and pains,
Ere thou of Israel's sceptre get fast hold;
Whereof this ominous night that clos'd thee round,
So many terrors, voices, prodigies,

May warn thee, as a sure foregoing sign.

So talk'd he while the Son of God went on, And stay'd not, but in brief him an wer'd thus:

Me worse than wet thou find'st not; other harm Those terrors which thou speak'st of did me none; I never fear'd they could, though noising loud, And threat'ning nigh; what they can do as signs Betokening, or ill-boding, I contemn