The Consolation of Philosophy

much weeping, and I could not tell who was this woman of authority so commanding—I was dumbfounded, and, with my gaze fastened on the earth, continued silently to await what she might do next. Then she drew near me and sat on the edge of my couch, and, looking into my face all heavy with grief and fixed in sadness on the ground, she bewailed in these words the disorder of my mind:

Alas! In what abyss his mind
Is plunged, how wildly tossed!
Still, still towards the outer night
She sinks, her true light lost,
As often it is, lashed tumultuously
By earth-born blasts, care's waves rise high.

Yet once he ranged the open heavens,
The sun's bright pathway tracked;
Watched how the cold moon waxed and waned
Nor rested, till there lacked
To his wide knowledge no star that steers
Amid the maze of circling spheres.

The causes why the blustering winds
Vex ocean's tranquil face,
Whose hand does turn the stable globe,
Or why his even race
From out the ruddy east the sun
Unto the western waves does run: