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Democritus Platonissans

Chapter 22: WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
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About This Book

The poem offers a philosophical and devotional meditation that argues for the soul’s immortality while imagining a plenitude of worlds. It blends neo‑Platonic mysticism, Copernican cosmology, and engagement with Cartesian ideas to reject a mechanistic Epicurean account and assert divine immanence throughout an infinite universe. Argumentative verse and lyric reflection alternate as the speaker attempts to harmonize reason, spiritual experience, and metaphysical concerns about matter, providence, and the scope of the divine presence.

The Philosophers Devotion.

S ing aloud his praise rehearse

Who hath made the Universe.

He the boundlesse Heavens has spread

All the vitall Orbs has kned;

He that on Olympus high

Tends his flocks with watchfull eye,

And this eye has multiplide

Midst each flock for so reside.

Thus as round about they stray

Toucheth each with out-stretch’d ray,

Nimbly they hold on their way,

Shaping out their Night and Day.

Never slack they; none respires,

Dancing round their Centrall fires.

In due order as they move

Echo’s sweet be gently drove

Thorough Heavens vast Hollownesse,

Which unto all corners presse:

Musick that the heart of Jove

Moves to joy and sportfull love;

Fills the listning saylers eares

Riding on the wandering Sphears.

Neither Speech nor Language is

Where their voice is not transmisse.

God is Good, is Wise, is Strong,

Witnesse all the creature-throng,

Is confess’d by every Tongue.

All things back from whence they sprong,

As the thankfull Rivers pay

What they borrowed of the Sea.

Now my self I do resigne,

Take me whole I all am thine.

Save me, God! from Self-desire,

Deaths pit, dark Hells raging fire,

Envy, Hatred, Vengeance, Ire.

Let not Lust my soul bemire.

Quit from these thy praise I’ll sing,

Loudly sweep the trembling string.

Bear a part, O Wisdomes sonnes!

Free’d from vain Relligions.

Lo! from farre I you salute,

Sweetly warbling on my Lute.

Indie, Egypt, Arabie,

Asia, Greece, and Tartarie,

Carmel-tracts, and Lebanon

With the Mountains of the Moon,

from whence muddie Nile doth runne,

Or whereever else you won;

Breathing in one vitall aire,

One we are though distant farre.

Rise at once lett’s sacrifice

Odours sweet perfume the skies.

See how Heavenly lightning fires

Hearts inflam’d with high aspires!

All the substance of our souls

Up in clouds of Incense rolls.

Leave we nothing to our selves

Save a voice, what need we els!

Or an hand to wear and tire

On the thankfull Lute or Lyre.

Sing aloud his praise rehearse

Who hath made the Universe.

FINIS.

The Augustan Reprint Society

WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK
MEMORIAL LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

 

PUBLICATIONS IN PRINT

Where available, Project Gutenberg e-text numbers are included as links.

1948-1949

16. Henry Nevil Payne, The Fatal Jealousie (1673).

18. Anonymous, “Of Genius,” in The Occasional Paper, Vol. III, No. 10 (1719), and Aaron Hill, Preface to The Creation (1720).

1949-1950

19. Susanna Centlivre, The Busie Body (1709).

20. Lewis Theobald, Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734).

22. Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), and two Rambler papers (1750).

23. John Dryden, His Majesties Declaration Defended (1681).

1950-1951

26. Charles Macklin, The Man of the World (1792).

1951-1952

31. Thomas Gray, An Elegy Wrote in a Country Churchyard (1751), and The Eton College Manuscript.

1952-1953

41. Bernard Mandeville, A Letter to Dion (1732).

Here as in e-texts 29237 and 29684 (from the same year), one or two pages from the list of titles in print appear to be missing. The same list should be present in any Augustan Reprint from a later year.

1962-1963

98. Select Hymns Taken Out of Mr. Herbert’s Temple (1697).

1963-1964

104. Thomas D’Urfey, Wonders in the Sun: or, The Kingdom of the Birds (1706).

1964-1965

110. John Tutchin, Selected Poems (1685-1700).

111. Anonymous, Political Justice (1736).

112. Robert Dodsley, An Essay on Fable (1764).

113. T. R., An Essay Concerning Critical and Curious Learning (1698).

114. Two Poems Against Pope: Leonard Welsted, One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope (1730), and Anonymous, The Blatant Beast (1742).

1965-1966

115. Daniel Defoe and others, Accounts of the Apparition of Mrs. Veal.

116. Charles Macklin, The Covent Garden Theatre (1752).

117. Sir Roger L’Estrange, Citt and Bumpkin (1680).

118. Henry More, Enthusiasmus Triumphatus (1662).

119. Thomas Traherne, Meditations on the Six Days of the Creation (1717).

120. Bernard Mandeville, Aesop Dress’d or a Collection of Fables (1704).

1966-1967

122. James MacPherson, Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1760).

123. Edmond Malone, Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Mr. Thomas Rowley (1782).

124. Anonymous, The Female Wits (1704).

125. Anonymous, The Scribleriad (1742). Lord Hervey, The Difference Between Verbal and Practical Virtue (1742).

126. Le Lutrin: an Heroick Poem, Written Originally in French by Monsieur Boileau: Made English by N. O. (1682).


Subsequent publications may be checked in the annual prospectus.

Publications #1 through 90, of the first fifteen years of Augustan Reprint Society, are available in bound units at $14.00 per unit of six from:

KRAUS REPRINT CORPORATION
16 East 46th Street
New York, N.Y. 10017

Publications in print are available at the regular membership rate of $5.00 yearly. Prices of single issues may be obtained upon request.


 

William Andrews Clark Memorial Library: University of California, Los Angeles

The Augustan Reprint Society

General Editors: George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles;
Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles; Robert Vosper, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
Corresponding Secretary: Mrs. Edna C. Davis, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

The Society’s purpose is to publish reprints (usually facsimile reproductions) of rare seventeenth and eighteenth century works. All income of the Society is devoted to defraying costs of publication and mailing.

Correspondence concerning memberships in the United States and Canada should be addressed to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2520 Cimarron St., Los Angeles, California. Correspondence concerning editorial matters may be addressed to any of the general editors at the same address. Manuscripts of introductions should conform to the recommendations of the MLA Style Sheet. The membership fee is $5.00 a year in the United States and Canada and 30/— in Great Britain and Europe. British and European prospective members should address B. H. Blackwell, Broad Street, Oxford, England. Copies of back issues in print may be obtained from the Corresponding Secretary.

PUBLICATIONS FOR 1967-1968

127-128. Charles Macklin, A Will and No Will, or a Bone for the Lawyers (1746). The New Play Criticiz’d, or The Plague of Envy (1747). Introduction by Jean B. Kern.

129. Lawrence Echard, Prefaces to Terence’s Comedies (1694) and Plautus’s Comedies (1694). Introduction by John Barnard.

130. Henry More, Democritus Platonissans (1646). Introduction by P. G. Stanwood.

131. John Evelyn, The History of . . . Sabatai Sevi . . . The Suppos’d Messiah of the Jews (1669). Introduction by Christopher W. Grose.

132. Walter Harte, An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad (1730). Introduction by Thomas B. Gilmore.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Next in the series of special publications by the Society will be a volume including Elkanah Settle’s The Empress of Morocco (1673) with five plates; Notes and Observations on the Empress of Morocco (1674) by John Dryden, John Crowne and Thomas Shadwell; Notes and Observations on the Empress of Morocco Revised (1674) by Elkanah Settle; and The Empress of Morocco. A Farce (1674) by Thomas Duffet, with an Introduction by Maximillian E. Novak. Already published in this series are reprints of John Ogilby’s The Fables of Aesop Paraphras’d in Verse (1668), with an Introduction by Earl Miner and John Gay’s Fables (1727, 1738), with an Introduction by Vinton A. Dearing. Publication is assisted by funds from the Chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles. Price to members of the Society, $2.50 for the first copy and $3.25 for additional copies. Price to non-members, $4.00.

THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
2520 CIMARRON STREET AT WEST ADAMS BOULEVARD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90018

Make check or money order payable to The Regents of the University of California.

Spelling and Language

The author used a number of forms that were unusual or archaic even in 1646, and might be mistaken for typographical errors:

ne (conjunction)

won
stay, dwell (like German wohnen)

eath
easy, light; also uneath

Words in -en, especially verbs:

aboven, amazen, been (infinitive), causen, standen, withouten...

Both occurrences of the name “DesCartes” or “DesChartes” are at line break; the hyphen has been omitted conjecturally. In general, spellings that appear more than once, such as “Psyc-” for “Psych-”, were assumed to be inten­tional. In corrections, the word “invisible” means that the letter is absent but there is an appropriately sized blank space.

Greek diacritics were consistently printed over the first vowel of an initial diphthong. This has been silently regularized.

Pagination

Democritus Platonissans and Cupids Conflict were each paginated from 1; other parts of the original have no visible page numbers. Individual missing numbers may have been too near the margin to be included in the facsimile. Folio numbers (signatures) are continuous for the whole text. Gaps in the sequence represent blank pages, except that A was probably a half-octavo (4 leaves instead of 8).