L’anima e il corpo

A Dialogue Between the Soul and Body

by Andrew Marvell

SOUL 

O who shall, from this dungeon, raise 
A soul enslav’d so many ways? 
With bolts of bones, that fetter’d stands 
In feet, and manacled in hands; 
Here blinded with an eye, and there 
Deaf with the drumming of an ear; 
A soul hung up, as ’twere, in chains 
Of nerves, and arteries, and veins; 
Tortur’d, besides each other part, 
In a vain head, and double heart. 

BODY 

O who shall me deliver whole 
From bonds of this tyrannic soul? 
Which, stretch’d upright, impales me so 
That mine own precipice I go; 
And warms and moves this needless frame, 
(A fever could but do the same) 
And, wanting where its spite to try, 
Has made me live to let me die. 
A body that could never rest, 
Since this ill spirit it possest. 

SOUL 

What magic could me thus confine 
Within another’s grief to pine? 
Where whatsoever it complain, 
I feel, that cannot feel, the pain; 
And all my care itself employs; 
That to preserve which me destroys; 
Constrain’d not only to endure 
Diseases, but, what’s worse, the cure; 
And ready oft the port to gain, 
Am shipwreck’d into health again. 

BODY 

But physic yet could never reach 
The maladies thou me dost teach; 
Whom first the cramp of hope does tear, 
And then the palsy shakes of fear; 
The pestilence of love does heat, 
Or hatred’s hidden ulcer eat; 
Joy’s cheerful madness does perplex, 
Or sorrow’s other madness vex; 
Which knowledge forces me to know, 
And memory will not forego. 
What but a soul could have the wit 
To build me up for sin so fit? 
So architects do square and hew 
Green trees that in the forest grew.