CCCXVI

VANITAS VANITATUM

ALL the flowers of the spring
Meet to perfume our burying;
These have but their growing prime,
And man does flourish but his time:
Survey our progress from our birth—
We are set, we grow, we turn to earth.
Courts adieu, and all delights,
All bewitching appetites!
Sweetest breath and clearest eye
Like perfumes go out and die;
And consequently this is done
As shadows wait upon the sun.
Vain the ambition of kings

Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,

And weave but nets to catch the wind.

J. Webster.

CCCXVII

IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY

MORTALITY, behold and fear!
What a change of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones

Sleep beneath this heap of stones!

DEATH'S EMISSARIES

Here they lie had realms and lands,

Who now want strength to stir their hands:
Here from their pulpits seal'd with dust
They preach, 'In greatness is no trust.'
Here is an acre sown indeed

With the richest, royall'st seed

That the earth did e'er suck in

Since the first man died for sin :

Here the bones of birth have cried,

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'Though gods they were, as men they died!' Here are sands, ignoble things,

Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings;

Here's a world of pomp and state,

Buried in dust, once dead by fate.

CCCXVIII

Francis Beaumont.

DEATH'S EMISSARIES

VICTORIOUS Men of earth, no more

Proclaim how wide your empires are ;

Though you bind on every shore

And your triumphs reach as far

As night or day,

Yet you, proud monarchs, must obey

And mingle with forgotten ashes, when

Death calls ye to the crowd of common men.

Devouring Famine, Plague, and War,
Each able to undo mankind,
Death's servile emissaries are;
Nor to these alone confined,
He hath at will

More quaint and subtle ways to kill;
A smile or kiss, as he will use the art,
Shall have the cunning skill to break a heart.
James Shirley.

CCCXIX

DEATH THE LEVELLER

THE glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against Fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and Crown

Must tumble down,

And in the dust be equal made

With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

Some men with swords may reap the field,
And plant fresh laurels where they kill :
But their strong nerves at last must yield;
They tame but one another still:
Early or late

They stoop to fate,

And must give up their murmuring breath
When they, pale captives, creep to death.

THE WIDOW

The garlands wither on your brow;

Then boast no more your mighty deeds;
Upon Death's purple altar now

See where the victor-victim bleeds.
Your heads must come

To the cold tomb:

Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.

CCCXX

287

James Shirley.

THE WIDOW

How near me came the hand of Death,
When at my side he struck my Dear,
And took away the precious breath
What quicken'd my beloved peer 1!

How helpless am I thereby made!
By day how grieved, by night how sad!
And now my life's delight is gone,

-Alas! how I am left alone!

The voice which I did more esteem
Than music in her sweetest key,
Those eyes which unto me did seem
More comfortable than the day;

Those now by me, as they have been
Shall never more be heard or seen;

But what I once enjoy'd in them
Shall seem hereafter as a dream.

1 Companion.

Lord! keep me faithful to the trust
Which my dear spouse reposed in me:
To him now dead preserve me just
In all that should performèd be!

For though our being man and wife
Extendeth only to this life,

Yet neither life nor death shall end
The being of a faithful friend.

Geo. Wither.

CCCXXI

THE MOURNING DOVE

LIKE as the Culver1 on the bared bough
Sits mourning for the absence of her mate;
And in her song sends many a wishful vow
For his return that seems to linger late.

So I alone now left disconsolate

Mourn to myself the absence of my

love :

And wand'ring here and there all desolate

Seek with my plaints to match that mournful dove

Ne joy of aught that under heaven doth hove
Can comfort me, but her own joyous sight
Whose sweet aspect both God and man can move
In her unspotted pleasance to delight.

Dark is my day whiles her fair light I miss,
And dead my life that wants such lively bliss.

Spenser.

1 Dove.