The Dirge

VVhat is th' Existence of Mans life?

But open war, or slumber'd strife.

Where sickness to his sense presents

The combat of the Elements:

And never feels a perfect Peace

Till deaths cold hand signs his release.

It is a storm where the hot blood

Out-vies in rage the boyling flood;

And each loud Passion of the mind

Is like a furious gust of wind,

Which beats his Bark with many a Wave

Till he casts Anchor in the Grave.

It is a flower which buds and growes,

And withers as the leaves disclose;

Whose spring and fall faint seasons keep,

Like fits of waking before sleep:

Then shrinks into that fatal mold

Where its first being was enroll'd.

It is a dream, whose seeming truth

Is moraliz'd in age and youth:

Where all the comforts he can share

As wandring as his fancies are;

Till in a mist of dark decay

The dreamer vanish quite away.

It is a Diall, which points out

The Sun-set as it moves about:

And shadowes out in lines of night

The subtile stages of times flight,

Till all obscuring earth hath laid

The body in perpetual shade.

It is a weary enterlude

Which doth short joyes, long woes include.

The World the Stage, the Prologue tears,

The Acts vain hope, and vary'd fears: 

The Scene shuts up with loss of breath,

And leaves no Epilogue but Death.