To Sir Edward Herbert, now Lord Herbert Cherbury, being at the Siege of Juliers by John Donne

Man is a lump, where all beasts kneaded be; / Wisdom makes him an ark, where all agree. / The fool, in whom these beasts do live at jar, / Is sport to others, and a theatre. / Nor 'scapes he so, but is himself their prey; / All which was man in him, is eat away; / And now his beasts on one another feed, / Yet couple in anger, and new monsters breed. / How happy's he, which hath due place assign'd / To his beasts, and disafforested his mind; / Impaled himself to keep them out, not in; / Can sow, and dares trust, corn where they have been; / Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and every beast, / And is not ass himself to all the rest. / Else, man not only is the herd of swine, / But he's those devils too, which did incline / Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse; / For man can add weight to heaven's heaviest curse. / As souls (they say) by our first touch take in / The poisonous tincture of original sin, / So, to the punishments which God doth fling, / Our apprehension contributes the sting. / To us, as to His chickens, He doth cast / Hemlock, and we, as men, His hemlock taste. / We do infuse to what He meant for meat / Corrosiveness, or intense cold or heat; / For God no such specific poison hath / As kills, we know not how; His fiercest wrath / Hath no antipathy, but may be good / At least for physic, if not for our food. / Thus man, that might be His pleasure, is His rod, / And is His devil, that might be his God. / Since then our business is to rectify / Nature, to what she was, we're led awry / By them, who man to us in little show, / Greater than due; no form we can bestow / On him, for man into himself can draw / All; all his faith can swallow, or reason chaw. / All that is filled and all that which doth fill, / All the round world, to man is but a pill; / In all it works not, but it is in all / Poisonous, or purgative, or cordial; / For knowledge kindles calentures in some, / And is to others icy opium. / As brave as true is that profession then / Which you do use to make-that you know man. / This makes it credible; you have dwelt upon / All worthy books, and now are such an one. / Actions are authors, and of those in you / Your friends find, every day, a mart of new.