LIFE
I made a posy while the day ran by:
Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band;
But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away,
And withered in my hand.
My hand was next to them, and then my heart;
I took, without more thinking, in good part
Time’s gentle admonition;
Who did so sweetly Death’s sad taste convey,
Making my mind to smell my fatal day,
Yet sugaring the suspicion.
Farewell, dear flowers; sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit while ye lived for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures.
I follow straight, without complaints or grief,
Since if my scent be good, I care not if
It be as short as yours.
MISERY
Lord, let the angels praise Thy name:
Man is a foolish thing, a foolish thing;
Folly and sin play all his game;
His house still burns, and yet he still doth sing—
Man is but grass,
He knows it—‘Fill the glass.’
How canst Thou brook his foolishness?
Why, he’ll not lose a cup of drink for Thee:
Bid him but temper his excess,
Not he: he knows where he can better be—
As he will swear—
Than to serve Thee in fear.
What strange pollutions doth he wed,
And make his own! as if none knew but he.
No man shall beat into his head
That Thou within his curtains drawn canst see:
‘They are of cloth
Where never yet came moth.’
The best of men, turn but Thy hand
For one poor minute, stumble at a pin;
They would not have their actions scanned,
Nor any sorrow tell them that they sin,
Though it be small,
And measure not the fall.
They quarrel Thee, and would give over
The bargain made to serve Thee; but Thy love
Holds them unto it, and doth cover
Their follies with the wings of Thy mild Dove,
Not suffering those
Who would, to be Thy foes.