A SONG FOR PRIESTS

269

CCXCVII

A SONG FOR PRIESTS

O WEARISOME Condition of humanity!
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity;
Created sick, commanded to be sound:

-What meaneth Nature by these diverse laws?
Passion and Reason self-division cause.

Is it the mark or majesty of power

To make offences that it may forgive? Nature herself doth her own self deflower, To hate those errors she herself doth give. But how should Man think that he may not do, If Nature did not fail and punish too?

Tyrant to others, to herself unjust,

Only commands things difficult and hard. Forbids us all things which it knows we lust; Makes easy pains, impossible reward.

If Nature did not take delight in blood,

She would have made more easy ways to good.

We that are bound by vows, and by promotion,
With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites,
To lead belief in good and 'stil1 devotion.

To preach of Heaven's wonders and delights;
Yet when each of us in his own heart looks,
He finds the God there far unlike his books
Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke,

1 Instil.

CCXCVIII

THE LIFE OF MAN

1

LIKE to the falling of a star,
Or as the flights of eagles are,
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew,

Or like the wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood:
Even such is Man, whose borrow'd light
Is straight call'd in and paid to night.
The wind blows out; the bubble dies;
The spring entomb'd in autumn lies;
The dew's dry'd up; the star is shot;
The flight is past; and man forgot.

Henry King.

CCXCIX

2

THE World's a bubble; and the life of Man
Less than a span:

In his conception wretched-from the womb
So to the tomb;

Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years
With cares and fears.

Who then to frail mortality shall trust

But limns on water, or but writes in dust.

THE LIFE OF MAN

Yet whilst with sorrow here we live opprest,

What life is best?

Courts are but only superficial schools
To dandle fools;

The rural part is turn'd into a den
Of savage men ;

And where's the city from foul vice so free
But may be term'd the worst of all the three?

Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed,
Or pains his head:

Those that live single take it for a curse,

Or do things worse:

271

These would have children; those that have them

moan,

Or wish them gone:

What is it then, to have, or have no wife,
But single thraldom, or a double strife?

Our own affections still at home to please,
Is a disease;

To cross the seas to any foreign soil,

Peril and toil;

Wars with their noise affright us: when they cease,

We're worse in peace:

-What then remains, but that we still should

cry

For being born, or, being born, to die?

Francis, Lord Bacon.

CCC

3

THIS life, which seems so fair,

Is like a bubble blown up in the air
By sporting children's breath,

Who chase it everywhere

And strive who can most motion it bequeath.

And though it sometime seem of its own might
Like to an eye of gold to be fix'd there,
And firm to hover in that empty height,
That only is because it is so light.

—But in that pomp it doth not long appear;
For e'en when most admired, it in a thought,
As swell'd from nothing, doth dissolve in naught.
Drummond of Hawthornden.

CCCI

INEXORABLE DEATH

My thoughts hold mortal strife;

I do detest my life,

And with lamenting cries

Peace to my soul to bring

Oft call that prince which here doth monarchise: -But he, grim-grinning King,

Who caitiffs scorns, and doth the blest surprise, Late having deck'd with beauty's rose his tomb, Disdains to crop a weed, and will not come.

Drummond of Hawthornden.

A PASSION

273

CCCII

OF MISERY

CORPSE,1 clad with carefulness;
Heart, heap'd with heaviness;
Purse, poor and penniless;
Back bare in bitterness;

O get my grave in readiness;

Fain would I die to end this stress.

Thomas Howell.

CCCIII

A PASSION

HAPPY were he could finish forth his fate
In some unhaunted desert, where, obscure
From all society, from love and hate

Of worldly folk, there might he sleep secure;

Then wake again, and ever give God praise; Content with hips, with haws, with bramble-berry; In contemplation spending still his days,

And change of holy thoughts to make him merry:

Where, when he dies, his tomb may be a bush, Where harmless robin dwells with gentle thrush : -Happy were he!

R. Devereux, Earl of Essex.

1 Body.

S