SOUL O who shall, from this dungeon, raise A soul enslav’d so many ways? With bolts of bones, that fetter’d stands In feet, and manacled in hands; Here blinded with an eye, and there Deaf with the drumming of an ear; A soul hung up, as ’twere, in chains Of nerves, and arteries, and veins; Tortur’d, besides each other part, In a vain head, and double heart. BODY O who shall me deliver whole From bonds of this tyrannic soul? Which, stretch’d upright, impales me so That mine own precipice I go; And warms and moves this needless frame, (A fever could but do the same) And, wanting where its spite to try, Has made me live to let me die. A body that could never rest, Since this ill spirit it possest. SOUL What magic could me thus confine Within another’s grief to pine? Where whatsoever it complain, I feel, that cannot feel, the pain; And all my care itself employs; That to preserve which me destroys; Constrain’d not only to endure Diseases, but, what’s worse, the cure; And ready oft the port to gain, Am shipwreck’d into health again. BODY But physic yet could never reach The maladies thou me dost teach; Whom first the cramp of hope does tear, And then the palsy shakes of fear; The pestilence of love does heat, Or hatred’s hidden ulcer eat; Joy’s cheerful madness does perplex, Or sorrow’s other madness vex; Which knowledge forces me to know, And memory will not forego. What but a soul could have the wit To build me up for sin so fit? So architects do square and hew Green trees that in the forest grew.
Andrew Marvell, A Dialogue Between the Soul and the Body