There is a curtain for love and one for hate: there is a curtain for youth and another for age. And when we finally realize these things we are dotards, and our realization laughs.
The executioner’s curtain is no doubt the swiftest. The jig maker’s safest. The priest’s dullest. The mariner’s loneliest. The lover’s saddest.
Henley Street
July 8, ’15
These pages are so unlike my plays and sonnets and yet I have to struggle to get anything down! Here is my mock dukedom; since I can not write any longer I look back across time from the shelf of my memory, longing to improve my existence: I am certain that the old word-chattels gladly deserted me, looking for a young man, no doubt, an upstart from Snitterfield, enroute to London, riding a brood mare, humming...hey, non nonny...
...Heaven mend all!
Henley Street
July 9, 1615