Tread (reader) gently, gently ore
The happy dust beneath this floor:
For in this narrow vault is set
An alablaster cabinet,
Wherein both arts and arms were put,
Like Homers Iliads in a nut,
Till Death with slow and easie pace
Snatcht the bright jewell from the case;
And now, transform'd, he doth arise
A constellation in the skies,
Teaching the blinded world the way,
Through night, to startle into day:
And shipwrackt shades, with steady hand,
He steers unto th' Elizian land.
Dudley Posthumus-Lovelace.
THE END.
Comments on the preparation of the E-Text:
ANGLE BRACKETS:
Any place where angle brackets are used, i.e. < >, it is a change made during the preparation of this E-Text. The original printed book did not use this character at all.
SQUARE BRACKETS:
The square brackets, i.e. [ ] are copied from the printed book, without change.
FOOTNOTES:
For this E-Text version of the book, the footnotes have been consolidated at the end of each section of the introduction, and at the end of each poem.
Numbering of the footnotes has been changed, and each footnote is given a unique identity in the form <XX.YY>, where XX is a poem or a section of the introduction, and YY is the number of the note within that poem or section.