Your most beautiful bride who with garlands is crown'd
And kills with each glance as she treads on the ground,
Whose lightness and brightness doth shine in such splendour
That none but the stars
Are thought fit to attend her,
Though now she be pleasant and sweet to the sense,
Will be damnable mouldy a hundred years hence.
Then why should we turmoil in cares and in fears,
Turn all our tranquill'ty to sighs and to tears?
Let 's eat, drink, and play till the worms do corrupt us,
'Tis certain, Post mortem
Nulla voluptas.
For health, wealth and beauty, wit, learning and sense,
Must all come to nothing a hundred years hence.
Richard Crashaw. 1613?-1649
336. Wishes to His Supposed Mistress
WHOE'ER she be—
That not impossible She
That shall command my heart and me:
Where'er she lie,
Lock'd up from mortal eye
In shady leaves of destiny:
Till that ripe birth
Of studied Fate stand forth,
And teach her fair steps to our earth:
Till that divine
Idea take a shrine
Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:
Meet you her, my Wishes,
Bespeak her to my blisses,
And be ye call'd my absent kisses.
I wish her Beauty,
That owes not all its duty
To gaudy tire, or glist'ring shoe-tie: