THE AUTHOR'S APOLOGY FOR HIS BOOK. 23

He creeps, he goes, he stands; yea, who can tell
Of all his postures? Yet there’s none of these
Will make him master of what fowls he please.
Yea, he must pipe and whistle to catch this ;
Yet, if he does so, that bird he will miss,
If that a pearl may in a toad’s head dwell,
And may be found too in an oyster-shell ;
If things that promise nothing do contain
What better is than gold; who will disdain,
That have an inkling of it, there to look,
That they may find it? Now, my little book
(Though void of all these paintings that may make
It with this or the other man to take)
Is not without those things that do excel
What do in brave but empty notions dwell.
“ Well, yet I am not fully satisfied
That this your book will stand, when soundly tried.”
Why, what’s the matter? “Tt is dark.” What though?
“But it is feignéd.” What of that? I trow
Some men, by feignéd words, as dark as mine
Make truth to spangle and its rays to shine.
“But they want solidness.” Speak, man, thy mind.
“They drown the weak ; metaphors make us blind.”
Solidity, indeed, becomes the pen
Of him that writeth things divine to men ;
But must I needs want solidness, because
By metaphors I speak? Were not God’s laws,
His Gospel laws, in olden time held forth
By types, shadows, and metaphors? Yet loth
Will any sober man be to find fault
With them, lest he be found for to assault
The highest wisdom. No, he rather stoops,
And seeks to find out by what pins and loops,
By calves and sheep, by heifers and by rams,
By birds and herbs, and by the blood of lambs,
God speaketh to him; and happy is he
That finds the light and grace that in them be.
Be not too forward, therefore, to conclude
That I want solidness—that I am rude:
All things solid in show not solid be ;
All things in parables despise not we ;
Lest things most hurtful lightly we receive,
And things that good are, of our souls bereave.
My dark and cloudy words, they do but hold
The truth, as cabinets enclose the gold.
The prophets uséd much by metaphors