To Doctor Alabaster.

Nor art thou less esteem'd that I have plac'd,     Amongst mine honour'd, thee almost the last:     In great processions many lead the way     To him who is the triumph of the day,     As these have done to thee who art the one,     One only glory of a million:     In whom the spirit of the gods does dwell,     Firing thy soul, by which thou dost foretell     When this or that vast dynasty must fall     Down to a fillet more imperial;     When this or that horn shall be broke, and when     Others shall spring up in their place again;     When times and seasons and all years must lie     Drowned in the sea of wild eternity;     When the black doomsday books, as yet unseal'd,     Shall by the mighty angel be reveal'd;     And when the trumpet which thou late hast found     Shall call to judgment. Tell us when the sound     Of this or that great April day shall be,     And next the Gospel we will credit thee.     Meantime like earth-worms we will crawl below,     And wonder at those things that thou dost know.