CAELICA: 66 by FULKE GREVILLE

Caelica, you, whose requests commandments be,
Advise me to delight my mind with books,
The glass where art doth to posterity
Show nature naked unto him that looks,
Enriching us, short'ning the ways of wit,
Which with experience else dear buyeth it.

Caelica, if I obey not, but dispute,
Think it is darkness which seeks out a light,
And to presumption do not it impute,
If I forsake this way of infinite;
Books be of men, men but in clouds do see,
Of whose embracements centaurs gotten be.

I have for books above my head the skies;
Under me, earth; about me, air and sea;
The truth for light, and reason for mine eyes,
Honor for guide, and nature for my way.
With change of times, laws, humors, manners, right,
Each in their diverse workings infinite.

Which powers from that we feel, conceive, or do,
Raise in our senses thorough joy, or smarts,
All forms, the good or ill can bring us to,
More lively far than can dead books or arts;
Which at the second hand deliver forth
Of few men's heads strange rules for all men's worth.

False antidotes are vicious ignorance,
Whose causes are within, and so their cure,
Error corrupting nature, not mischance,
For how can that be wise which is not pure?
So that man being but mere hypocrisy,
What can his arts but beams of folly be?

Let him then first set straight his inward sprite,
That his affections in the serving rooms
May follow reason not confound her light,
And make her subject to inferior dooms,
For till the inward molds be truly placed,
All is made crooked that in them we cast.

But when the heart, eyes' light, grow pure together,
And so vice in the way to be forgot,
Which threw man from creation, who knows whither?
Then this strange building, which the flesh knows not,
Revives a new-formed image in man's mind,
Where arts revealed are miracles defined.

What then need half-fast helps of erring wit,
Methods, or books of vain humanity
Which dazzle truth, by representing it,
And so entangle clouds to posterity,
Since outward wisdom springs from truth within,
Which all men feel, or hear before they sin.

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