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THAT EACH THING IS HURT OF ITSELF.
Why fearest thou the outward foe,
When thou thyself thy harm dost feed?
Of grief or hurt, of pain or woe,
Within each thing is sown the seed.
So fine was never yet the cloth,
No smith so hard his iron did beat,
| But th' one consuméd was with moth, |
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| Th' other with canker all to-freate. |
fretted away. |
The knotty oak and wainscot old
Within doth eat the silly worm;[53]
Even so a mind in envy rolled
Always within it self doth burn.
Thus every thing that nature wrought,
Within itself his hurt doth bear!
No outward harm need to be sought,
Where enemies be within so near.
Lest this poem should appear to any one hardly religious enough for the
purpose of this book, I would remark that it reminds me of what our Lord
says about the true source of defilement: it is what is bred in the man
that denies him. Our Lord himself taught a divine morality, which is as
it were the body of love, and is as different from mere morality as«the
living body is from the dead.
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