Old Proverb.
The web of life ... is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.
All’s Well that Ends Well.
Comes the blind Fury with th’ abhorred shears
And slits the thin-spun life.
Milton.
On the other side the inscriptions, which compare the life of a man to the life of a tree, are taken from Cardinal Wolsey’s speech in Henry VIII:—
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes.
To-morrow blossoms.