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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]