Mr. COWLEY's VERSES In PRAISE of M R. HOBBES, OPPOSED;  
By a Lover of Truth and Virtue.  

Idcirco Virtus medio jacet obruta coeno:  
Nequitiae classes candida vela ferunt.   

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Sint nunquam mihi tales  
Mores jupiter Pater: sed viis  
Simplicibus vitae insistam—  
Laudans Laudanda, Vituperiumque  
Inspergens Improbis.   PIND. NEM. ODE VIII. 
LONDON, Printed in the Year, 1680.   

To Mr. HOBBES  

(1)  
VAst Bodies of Philosophy  
I oft have seen, and read,  
But all are Bodies dead,  
Or Bodies by Art fashioned:  
I never yet the Living Soul could see  
But in thy Books, and thee.  
'Tis only God can know  
Whether the fair Idea thou dost show,  
Agree entirely with his own, or no.  
This I dare boldly tell,  
'Tis so like Truth 'twill serve our turn as well▪  
Just as in * Nature thy Proportions be.  
As full of Concord their Variety;  
As firm the parts upon their Centre rest,  
And all so Solid are, that they at least  
As much as Nature, Emptiness detest.   

(2)  
What Bodies of Philosophy  
You oft have seen, and read,  
I wish you had but mentioned,  
we'd judge if they're alive, or dead:  
We cannot judge before we Try.  
The Morals of the Stagarite  
Are Stars which to th' Dark World gave Light,  
But Hobbes by his would turn our Day to Night.  
Great Zenophon, and Plato, who relate,  
How Socrates embraced his Fate,  
And all the Brave Socratic Race,  
Whose Monuments Time can't deface,  
Shall live, when Hobbes shall have his Doom,  
So Lie as dead, as doth TOM THUMB:  
Good Men his Knavery spy:  
His Books contain some Truths, and many a Lie,  
Some Truths well known, but strange Impiety.  
* Stay! stay! where now fond Lad!  
Thy Wit thus strained, thou'rt ten times worse than Mad.  
What's Nature but the Ordinary way  
Wherein our Good Creator doth display  
His Power, and Wisdom in the things he made  
For his own Goodness sake? Man's not a Shade,  
But utter Darkness; whilst he acts alone,  
Whilst his works are not natures; but his own▪  
What! Hobbes, and Nature thus to parallel!  
What's this but to confront Bright Heaven with Hell!  
So doth the Poet's wit suit with his Theme:  
He that will Hobbes Applaud must first Blaspheme.   

(2)  
Loug did the mighty Stagirite retain  
The universal Intellectual Reign,  
Saw his own Countries short-lived Leopard slain;  
The stronger Roman Eagle did outfly,  
Oftener renewed his Age, and saw that Dye.  
Mecha itself in spite of Mahomet possessed,  
And chased by a wild Deluge from the East,  
His Monarchy new planted in the West.  
But as in time each great Imperial Race  
Degenerates, and gives some new one place:  
So did this Noble Empire waist,  
Sunk by degrees from Glories past,  
And in the School-mens hands perished quite at last.  
Then nought, but words it grew,  
And those all Barbarous too.  
It perished, and it vanished, there,  
The Life and Soul breathed out, became but empty Air.   

(2)  
The Empire of the Stagarites sublime and piercing wit,  
(Thoth'Empire both of Greece, and Rome  
Time did long since overcome)  
Shall ne'er decay, but men shall still to its vast Power submit;  
For All well-ordered thoughts must go  
Within the Compass of those Rules, which his great Art did show.  
Our HARVEY, whose bright Fame  
So Dazzled Envies Eye, that she could never see  
The least Pretence to lessen his Great Name,  
Even He commends the Stagirite  
To all Posterity,  
As one that had a Clear Insight  
Into the Secret ways of Nature's Majesty.  
'Tis true he failed in that he did not see  
That things Successive could not be  
From all Eternity:  
But yet he saw  
That this is Nature's Law,  
That all things must depend on him alone,  
Who gives to all things Motion, though himself has none,  
Who Is, and Was, and Ever shall Be ONE  
In all Simplicity,  
From Composition, and from Alteration free:  
To whom may all true Praise be given  
In Earth, as 'tis in Heaven.   

(3)  
The Fields which answered well the Ancients Blow,  
Spent and outworn return no Harvest now,  
In Barren Age wild, and unglorious lie  
And boast of past Fertility,  
The poor relief of present Poverty.  
Food, and Fruit we now must want,  
Unless New Lands we plant.  
We break up Tombs with Sacrilegious hands;  
Old Rubbish we remove,  
To walk in Ruins like vain Ghosts we love,  
And with fond Divining Wands  
We search among the Dead,  
For Treasures Buried,  
Whilst still the liberal Earth does hold  
So many Virgin Mines of undiscovered Gold.   

(3)  
That in this Age Men done't their Thoughts confine  
Within the Line  
Of what Judicious Aristotle said;  
Nor are his Works so commented,  
As they were in those Days;  
They don't hereby detract from his Great Praise.  
Sith they walk in those ways,  
To which his mighty Genius led.  
His Commendation was not this, that he  
Did show the Truth of this, or that Particularity;  
But that he showed the way to clear our Thought,  
That every Man might find that Truth, which should by him be sought.   

(4)  
The Baltic, Euxin, and the Caspian,  
And slender limbed Mediterranean  
Seem Narrow Creeks to Thee, and only fit  
For the poor wretched Fisherboats of Wit:  
Thy Nobler Vessel the vast Ocean tries,  
And nothing sees but Seas and Skies,  
Till unknown Regions it descries.  
Thou great Columbus of the Golden Lands of New Philosophies,  
Thy Task was harder much than his;  
For thy learned America is  
Not only found out first by thee,  
And rudely left to future Industry;  
But thy Eloquence, and thy Wit  
Has planted, peopled, built, and civilised it.   

(4)  
'Tis true, thy New Philosopher has left the Caspian,  
The Baltic, Euxin, Mediterranean;  
The Narrow ways to all that Verity  
Which Mortals can descry;  
He Sails i'th' Ocean of the most Profound Impiety;  
And from the Coasts of Hell  
He brings those Wares, which he shall never sell  
To any, but those darkened Souls, which lie, where Adam fell.  
The Power of Earthly Princes he doth foolishly pretend  
By his fictitious Loyalty t' extend  
To larger measures; gives to Kings what's due to God alone:  
Thus what he seems to make more great, he really makes none:  
For sure on Earth there is No Monarchy,  
If it consist in ABSOLUTE Sovereignty.  
The King of Kings commands us to obey our King,  
By cheerful Doing, or by quiet Suffering:  
He that the Power of Kings would have much higher to arise,  
His King Dishonours, and his GOD he doth Despise:  
Such Folk dwell in those Colonies,  
Which Hobbes has planted in his Lands of New Philosophies.  
I little thought before,  
(Nor being my own self so poor,  
Could comprehend so vast a store)  
That all the Wardrobe of rich Eloquence,  
Could have afforded half enuff  
Of bright, of new, and lasting Stuff,  
To clothe the mighty limbs of thy Gigantic Sense,  
Thy solid Reason like the Shield from Heaven,  
To the Trojan Hero given,  
Too strong to take a mark from any mortal Dart,  
Yet shines with Gold, and Gems in every part,  
And wonders on it graved by the learned hand of Art;  
A Shield that gives delight  
Even to the Enemy's sight,  
Then when they're sure to lose the Combat by't.   

(5)  
His Monstrous Thoughts may well be called Gigantic Sense,  
To Heaven they fain would offer violence,  
Like those Giants of old  
Of which the Poets told.  
Even like Goliath they Defy  
The Armies of the Living God, and like him too they Die.  
The Man with his Gigantic Sense, his mighty Spear and Shield  
Comes forth into the Field;  
And for some time he Boasted there  
As if he had no Cause to Fear.  
His Captive-Darkned Soul can't see,  
What 'tis to have our Souls set free  
From the Black Chains of dire NECESSITY;  
This and a Thousand Errors more  
He strives to Land upon our Shoar;  
But than the Mighty BRAMHAL comes, and takes his Arms away,  
Shows that this Painted Shield's not fit for Fight, but Play,  
Strikes down the Monster, doth to All his Ugly Shape display.  
Then in another Field he's met by th' Mighty WARD;  
And here 'twas plainly seen, that he could neither guard  
Himself from being Wounded, or give Wounds;  
Down straight he falls, his Armour on him sounds,  
What e'er his Followers say, he never Rose again:  
His Ghost is heard to Rave sometimes, but then Bold TOM was slain.   

(6)  
Nor can the Snow, which now cold Age does shed  
Upon thy reverend Head,  
Quench or allay the noble Fires within,  
But all which thou hast been,  
And all that Youth can be, thou'rt yet,  
So fully still dost Thou  
Enjoy the Manhood, and the Bloom of Wit,  
And all the Natural Heat, but not the Fever too.  
So Contraries on Aetna's Top conspire  
Her hoary Frosts, and by them breaks out Fire.  
A secure peace the faithful Neighbours keep,  
Th' emboldened Snow next to the Flame does sleep.  
And if we weigh like Thee,  
Nature, and Causes we shall see,  
That thus it needs must be▪  
To things Immortal, Time can do no wrong,  
And that which never is to Die, for ever must be Young,  
TOM's grown Another Man, and now himself betakes  
To Poetry, and Sonnets makes  
Of Gods, and Goddesses, and such like things:  
He's now the Echo of what HOMER Sings.  
If Versifying be a Sign of Youth,  
The Man of Politics is youthful still:  
He does not here Pretend to show the Truth,  
On which Pretence how much Ink did he spill!  
O that he had spent all the Time  
In hard Translations, and in Rhyme,  
Which he spent in Opposing Truths, by which to Heaven we climb.  
No wonder, that Old Age, & Youth, Aetnean Cold, & Heat  
Should Meet in Him, in whom long since such Contradictions Met.  
I wish he may not Die too soon after so long a Life,  
That he no longer would maintain his cursed Strife  
, 'Gainst That, which would make him repent of all's Impieties:  
Lest his Long Life bring him i'th' End to th' WORM that Never Dies.   
FINIS.