The Lantern

Book 126

PG

Must have an immortality of frame.

And into these must each thing be resolved,

When comes its supreme hour, that thus there be

At hand the stuff for plenishing the world.

*****

So primal germs have solid singleness

Nor otherwise could they have been conserved

Through aeons and infinity of time

For the replenishment of wasted worlds.

Once more, if nature had given a scope for things

To be forever broken more and more,

By now the bodies of matter would have been

So far reduced by breakings in old days

That from them nothing could, at season fixed,

Be born, and arrive its prime and top of life.

For, lo, each thing is quicker marred than made;

And so whate'er the long infinitude

Of days and all fore-passed time would now

By this have broken and ruined and dissolved,

That same could ne'er in all remaining time

Be builded up for plenishing the world.

But mark: infallibly a fixed bound

Remaineth stablished 'gainst their breaking down;

Since we behold each thing soever renewed,

And unto all, their seasons, after their kind,