Emblemes

INQUIETUM EST COR NOSTRUM O restless heart! that seek'st thy rest In what the world can never give; Thy wants are more than thy request, And thou dost die while thou dost live. Thou drink'st, and yet thou art not fill'd; Thou grasp'st, and yet thou canst not hold; Thy hope is starv'd, thy fear is kill'd, Thy joy is barren, bleak, and cold.

Look well into thyself, and thou shalt find a strange contradiction. Thou desirest quiet, and yet thou art ever in pursuit. Thou lov'st peace, and yet thou feed'st thy mind with cares. Thou complain'st of trouble, and yet thou tak'st pains to meet it.

For the soul of man was not made to be satisfied with shadows. What thou call'st possession is but a loan; what thou call'st pleasure is but a flash; what thou call'st honour is but a breath of other men. And when the breath is spent, the honour dies; when the flash is past, the pleasure vanishes; when the loan is call'd for, the possession is gone.

If thou wouldst be at rest, seek not thy rest below thyself. The lower thou stoop'st, the more thou fall'st. Thou may'st change the room, but not thy heart; and if the heart be unquiet, the palace is but a larger prison.

There is but one cure for a wandering love: set it upon that which cannot be taken from thee. Turn thy desire from the many to the One; from the perishing to the abiding; from the noisy to the inward. Then shalt thou learn what it is to be rich with little, and to carry a calm within thee, even while the world without is full of storms.