|
Of being belov'd, and loving: or the thirst |
Of honour, or fair death, out-pusht me first, |
I lose my end: for here as well as I |
A desperate may live, and coward die. |
Stag, dog, and all which from, or towards flies, |
Is paid with life, or prey, or doing dies: |
Fate grudges us all, and doth subtly lay |
A scourge,* 'gainst which we all forgot* to pray. |
He that at sea prayes for more wind, as well |
Under the poles may beg cold, heat in hell. |
What are we then? How little more, alas, |
Is man now, then, before he was, he was? |
Nothing for us, we are for nothing fit; |
Chance, or our selves still disproportion it; |
We have no power, no will, no sense; I lie, |
I should not then thus feel this misery. |
|
To Sir Henry Wootton. |
|
Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle Souls, |
For, thus friends absent speak. This ease controuls |
The tediousness of my life: but for these |
I could invent nothing at all to please, |
But I should wither in one day, and pass |
To a Lock of hay, that am a Bottle of grass. |
Life is a voyage, and in our lives wayes |
Countryes, Courts, Towns are Rocks or Remoraes; |
They break or stop all ships, yet our state's such |
That (though then pitch they stain worse) we must touch. |
If in the furnace of the even line, |
Or under th'adverse icy pole thou pine, |
Thou know'st two temperate Regions girded in, |
Dwell there: but oh, what refuge canst thou win
|
[CW: Parchd] |