For he that's born to-day and dies to-morrow,
Loseth some days of mirth, but months of sorrow.
And this reminds me of an epitaph I chanced on in the graveyard at Manorbier whose ruinous castle towers above the green turf of its narrow ocean inlet, as if it were keeping a long tryst with the clocked church tower on the height:
Weep not for her ye friends that's dear,
Weep for your sins, for death is near—
You see by her, she [was] cut down soon.
Her morning Sun went down at noon.
And then there are these two unforgettable fragments, the one from the Scots of John Wedderburn (1542), and the other of a century before, its authorship unknown:
Who's at my Window?
Who's at my window, who, who?