The wind is turn'd, the flame reviv'd,
The news renew'd; and man new liv'd.
Sic Vita.] On this famous piece see Introduction. Only the first form is attributed to King and appears in his Poems; but it also appears not merely in the singular higgledy-piggledy called the poems of Francis Beaumont, 1653, but in the earlier and better edition of 1640. Simon Wastell was a schoolmaster who had been at Queen's College, Oxford; and who in 1629 appended these sets of verses to a book then entitled Microbiblion. The first is claimed by Quarles, who also wrote another in the form. William Browne's version was not published till 1815, and the authors of the two from the Malone MS. are unknown. The group is probably the palmary example in English of that coterie-and school-verse which distinguished the seventeenth century. The King-Beaumont form is certainly the best and probably the original. (It will be observed that X is palinodic to the others. It is, with IX, attributed as a single piece to Strode and entitled 'On Death and Resurrection' in MS. Malone 16, fol. 35, and Dobell's Poetical Works of W. Strode).
My Midnight Meditation.
Ill busi'd man! why shouldst thou take such care
To lengthen out thy life's short kalendar?
When every spectacle thou look'st upon
Presents and acts thy execution.