The earth his sober inn
And quiet pilgrimage.
" ... Yet suffer us, O Lord, not to repine, whether in the morning, at noon, or at midnight, that is to say, in our cradle, in our youth, or old age, we go to take our long sleep; but let us make this reckoning of our years, that if we can live no longer, that is unto us our old age; for he that liveth so long as thou appointest him (though he die in the pride of his beauty) dieth an old man...."
[274]. "Adieu! farewell Earth's Bliss."
This solemn dirge was written in "time of pestilence,"—such a time as Daniel Defoe tells of in his "Journal of the Plague Year." The Elizabethan poets brooded endlessly on the mystery of death. A music haunts their words like that of muffled bells, as in John Fletcher's poem:
... Come hither, you that hope, and you that cry,
Leave off complaining!
Youth, strength, and beauty, that shall never die,
Are here remaining.