Let hoary Time's vast bowels be the grave
To what his bowels' birth and being gave;
Let Nature die, (Phoenix-like) from death
Revived Nature takes a second breath;
If on Time's right hand, sit faire Historie,
If from the seed of emptie Ruine, she
Can raise so faire an harvest; let her be
Ne're so farre distant, yet Chronologie
(Sharp-sighted as the eagle's eye, that can
Out-stare the broad-beam'd daye's meridian)
Will have a perspicill to find her out,
And, through the night of error and dark doubt,
Discerne the dawne of Truth's eternall ray,
As when the rosie Morne budds into Day.
Now that Time's empire might be amply fill'd,
Babel's bold artists strive (below) to build
Ruine a temple; on whose fruitfull fall
History reares her pyramids, more tall
Than were th' Aegyptian (by the life these give,
Th' Egyptian pyramids themselves must live):
On these she lifts the world; and on their base
Showes the two termes, and limits of Time's race:
That, the creation is; the judgement, this;
That, the World's morning; this, her midnight is.