The Alchemy Key.pdf - Veritas File System

Into this sinful world from heaven to send,
That she to men should be a wicked scourge.
For all the virtues of imposing power
That are the work of nature or of art,
Were here advanc'd and set in highest seat,
And so temper'd the features of her face
With light and shade,
That pride and meekness mixed in equal parts.
She was far more beauteous, 'rich'd
With the pride of nature's excellence,
Than Venus in the brightest of her days.
Her hair did Apollo's locks surpass.
A hair stands not amiss,
And the costly curious tire carrying a net
(Wherein her curled locks entangeld gravest men)
Mended in her face what nature missed.
But she to cross nature's curious workmanship,
Did mingle beauty with infirmity
And pure perfection with impure defeature;
For in her later age pride, like a corn-fed steed,
Her advanc'd, making her subject
To the tyranny of mischances mad
And much misery,
As burning fevers, agues pale and faint,
Life-poisoning pestilence and frenzies wo'd
The marrow-eating sickness whose attaint
Disorder breeds by heating of the blood;
For she to all licentious lust
'Gan to exceed the measure of her mean
And natural first need
Till, like a jade self willed, herself doth tire
By black lust, dishonour, shame and misgoverning,
For she was guilty of perjury and subornation;
Guilty of treason, forgery and shift;
Guilty of incest, that abomination;
Guilty of murder and of theft,
And accessory by inclination
To all sins past and all that are to come,
From the creation to the general doom.
407