- If there be nothing new, but that which is
- Hath been before, how are our brains beguil’d,
- Which labouring for invention bear amiss
- The second burthen of a former child!
- O! that record could with a backward look,
- Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
- Show me your image in some antique book,
- Since mind at first in character was done!
- That I might see what the old world could say
- To this composed wonder of your frame;
- Wh’r we are mended, or wh’r better they,
- Or whether revolution be the same.
- O! sure I am the wits of former days,
- To subjects worse have given admiring praise.