A spirit and judgment equal or superiour,

(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere 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 childeren gathering pebbles on the shore.
Or, if I would delight my private hours
With musick 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

That pleas'd so well our victors' 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 God-like 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 prophets 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 learnt,
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 world? 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

Attend thee, scorns, reproaches, injuries,
Violence and stripes, and lastly cruel death;
A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom,
Real or allegorick, I discern not;

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

So saying he took, (for still he knew his power Nor 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 aery 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 tropick 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, the sturdiest oaks,
Bow'd their stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts,
Or torn up sheer. Ill wast thou shrouded then,
O patient Son of God, yet only stood'st

Unshaken! Nor yet staid the terrour 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 passed the night so foul, till Morning fair
Came 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 terrours dire.
And now the sun with more effectual beams
Had cheer'd the face of earth, and dried the wet

From drooping plant, or dropping 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,
Desperate 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 dangerous 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