My Spirit

Summary

My naked simple Life was I:

That Act so strongly shin'd

Upon the Earth, the Sea, the Sky,

It was the Substance of the Mind;

The Sense its self was I.

I felt no Dross nor Matter in my Soul,

No Brims nor Borders, such as in a Bowl

We see: My Essence was Capacity.

That felt all things;

The Thought that springs

There-from 's its Self: It hath no other Wings

To spread abroad, nor Eys to see,

No pair of Hands to feel,

Nor Knees to kneel:

But being Simple, like the Deity,

In its own Center is a Sphere,

Not limited, but evry-where.

It acts not from a Center to

Its Object, as remote;

But present is, where it doth go

To view the Being it doth note:

Whatever it doth do,

It doth not by another Engin mov,

But by and of its self doth Activ prov:

Its Essence is transform'd into a tru

And perfect Act.

And so exact

Hath God appear'd in this mysterious Fact,

That 'tis all Ey, all Act, all Sight;

Nay, what it pleas can be;

Not only see

Or do: for 'tis more voluble than Light,

Which can put on ten thousand Forms,

Being cloath'd with what its self adorns.

This made me present evermore

With whatsoere I saw.

An Object, if it were before

Mine Ey, was by Dame Nature's Law

Within my Soul: Her Store

Was all at once within me; all her Treasures

Were my immediat and internal Pleasures;

Substantial Joys, which did inform my Mind.

With all she wrought

My Soul was fraught,

And evry Object in my Heart, a Thought

Begot or was: I could not tell

Whether the Things did there

Themselvs appear,

Which in my Spirit truly seem'd to dwell:

Or whether my conforming Mind

Were not ev'n all that therin shin'd.