Though I carry always some ill-nature about me, yet it is, I hope, no more than is in this world necessary for a preservative.

But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near.

Gather the flowers, but spare the buds.

Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide.

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green glade ... Such was that happy garden-state.

The world in all doth but two nations bear- The good, the bad; and these mixed everywhere.

Annihilating all that's made, To a green thought in a green shade.