Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Restoration Verse. 1910.

For Thoughts

Thomas Flatman (1637–1688)

THOUGHTS! what are they?

They are my constant friends,

Who, when harsh Fate its dull brow bends,

Uncloud me with a smiling ray,

And in the depth of midnight force a day.

When I retire and flee

The busy throngs of company

To hug myself in privacy,

O the discourse—the pleasant talk

’Twixt us, my thoughts, along a lonely walk!

You (like the stupefying wine

The dying malefactors sip

With trembling lip,

T’ abate the rigour of their doom

By a less troublous cut to their long home)

Make me slight crosses, though they piled up lie,

All by the magic of an ecstasy.

Do I desire to see

The throne and awful majesty

Of that proud one,

Brother and uncle to the stars and sun?

These can conduct me where such toys reside

And waft me ’cross the main, sans wind and tide.

Would I descry

Those radiant mansions ’bove the sky,

Invisible to mortal eye,

My thoughts can easily lay

A shining track thereto,

And nimbly flitting go;

Through all the eleven orbs can shove a way.

My thoughts like Jacob’s ladder are

A most angelic thoroughfare.

The wealth that shines

In th’ oriental mines;

Those sparkling gems which Nature keeps

Within her cabinets, the deeps;

The verdant fields,

Those rarities the rich world yields,

Huge structures, whose each gilded spire

Glisters like lightning, which while men admire

They deem the neighbouring sky on fire—

These can I dwell upon and ’live mine eyes

With millions of varieties.

As on the front of Pisgah I

Can th’ Holy Land through these my optics spy.

Contemn we then

The peevish rage of men,

Whose violence can ne’er divorce

Our mutual amity,

Or lay so damned a curse

As non-addresses ’twixt my thoughts and me;

For though I sigh in irons, they

Use their old freedom, readily obey,

And, when my bosom friends desert me, stay.

Come then, my darlings, I’ll embrace

My privilege; make known

The high prerogative I own,

By making all allurements give you place,

Whose sweet society to me

A sanctuary and a shield shall be

’Gainst the full quivers of my Destiny.