She is a Spirit; yet not like air, or wind, Nor like the spirits about the heart or brain, Nor like those spirits which alchemists do find, When they, in everything, seek gold, _in vain_.
For She, all natures under heaven doth pass; Being like those spirits, which GOD's bright face do see, Or like Himself! whose Image once She was, Though now, alas, She scarce his Shadow be.
Yet of the forms, She holds the first degree, That are to gross material bodies knit; Yet She herself is bodiless and free, And, though confined, is almost infinite.
Were She a Body, how could She remain Within this body, which is less than She? Or how could She, the world's great shape contain; And in our narrow breasts contained be?
All bodies are confined within some place; But She all place within herself confines; All bodies have their measure and their space; But who can draw the Soul's dimensive lines?
No Body can, at once, two forms admit, Except the one, the other do deface; But in the Soul, ten thousand forms do sit, And none intrudes into her neighbour's place.
All bodies are, with other bodies filled, But She receives both heaven and earth together, Nor are their Forms, by rash encounter, spilled, For there they stand, and neither toucheth either.
Nor can her wide embracements fillèd be; For they that most and greatest things embrace, Enlarge thereby their mind's capacity, As streams enlarged, enlarge the channel's space.
All things received, do such proportion take, As those things have, wherein they are received: So little glasses, little faces make; And narrow webs, on narrow frames be weaved:
Then, what vast body must we make the Mind? Wherein are men, beasts, trees, towns, seas, and lands, And yet each thing a proper place doth find, And each thing in the true proportion stands.
Doubtless, this could not be, but that She turns Bodies to Spirits, by sublimation strange; As fire converts to fire, the things it burns; As we, our meats into our nature change.
From their gross Matter, she abstracts the Forms, And draws a kind of Quintessence from things, Which to her proper nature, She transforms, To bear them light on her celestial wings.
This doth She, when from things particular, She doth abstract the universal kinds, Which bodiless and immaterial are, And can be lodged but only in our minds.