What meaneth Nature by these diverse laws? Passion and Reason self-division cause.

Is it the mark or majesty of power
To make offences that it may forgive?
Nature herself doth her own self deflower,
To hate those errors she herself doth give.
But how should Man think that he may not do,
If Nature did not fail and punish too?

Tyrant to others, to herself unjust,

Only commands things difficult and hard. Forbids us all things which it knows we lust; Makes easy pains, impossible reward.

If Nature did not take delight in blood,

She would have made more easy ways to good.

We that are bound by vows, and by promotion,
With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites,

To lead belief in good and 'stil devotion.

To preach of heaven's wonders and delights;
Yet when each of us in his own heart looks,
He finds the God there far unlike his books.
F. Greville, Lord Brooke

484. Coronemus nos Rosis antequam

marcescant

LET us drink and be merry, dance, joke, and rejoice, With claret and sherry, theorbo and voice!

The changeable world to our joy is unjust,

All treasure's uncertain,

Then down with your dust!

In frolics dispose your pounds, shillings, and pence,
For we shall be nothing a hundred years hence.

We'll sport and be free with Moll, Betty, and Dolly,
Have oysters and lobsters to cure melancholy:
Fish-dinners will make a man spring like a flea,
Dame Venus, love's lady,

Was born of the sea:

With her and with Bacchus we'll tickle the sense,
For we shall be past it a hundred years hence.

Your most beautiful bride who with garlands is crown'd And kills with each glance as she treads on the ground, Whose lightness and brightness doth shine in such splendour That none but the stars

Are thought fit to attend her,

Though now she be pleasant and sweet to the sense,
Will be damnable mouldy a hundred years hence.

Then why should we turmoil in cares and in fears,
Turn all our tranquill'ty to sighs and to tears?
Let's eat, drink, and play till the worms do corrupt us,
'Tis certain, Post mortem

Nulla voluptas.

For health, wealth and beauty, wit, learning and sense, Must all come to nothing a hundred years hence.

T. Jordan

485.

486.

Crabbed Age and Youth

CRABBED Age and Youth

Cannot live together:

Youth is full of pleasance,
Age is full of care;

Youth like summer morn,
Age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave,
Age like winter bare.
Youth is full of sport,
Age's breath is short;

Youth is nimble, Age is lame;
Youth is hot and bold,

Age is weak and cold;

Youth is wild and Age is tame.

Age, I do abhor thee;

Youth, I do adore thee;

O, my Love, my Love is young!

Age, I do defy thee:

O, sweet shepherd, hie thee!

For methinks thou stay'st too long!

W. Shakespeare (?)

Times Go by Turns

HE loppèd tree in time may grow again,

THE

Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower;

The sorest wight may find release of pain,

The driest soil suck in some moist'ning shower;
Times go by turns and chances change by course,
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.

The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow,
She draws her favours to the lowest ebb;
Her time hath equal times to come and go,
Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web;
No joy so great but runneth to an end,
No hap so hard but may in fine amend.

Not always fall of leaf nor ever spring,
No endless night yet not eternal day;
The saddest birds a season find to sing,
The roughest storm a calm may soon allay:
Thus with succeeding turns God tempereth all,
That man may hope to rise, yet fear to fall.

487.

A chance may win that by mischance was lost;
The net that holds no great takes little fish;
In some things all, in all things none are crost,
Few all they need, but none have all they wish;
Unmeddled joys here to no man befall:
Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all.
R. Southwell

Even Such Is Time

EVEN such is Time, that takes in trust

Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wander'd all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;

But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.

Sir W. Raleigh

488.

TIME

Time

IME is the feather'd thing,
And, whilst I praise

The sparklings of thy looks and call them rays,
Takes wing,

Leaving behind him as he flies
An unperceived dimness in thine eyes.
His minutes, whilst they 're told,
Do make us old;

And every sand of his fleet glass,
Increasing age as it doth pass,
Insensibly sows wrinkles there
Where flowers and roses do appear.
Whilst we do speak, our fire
Doth into ice expire,

Flames turn to frost;

And ere we can

Know how our crow turns swan,
Or how a silver snow

Springs there where jet did grow,

Our fading spring is in dull winter lost.

Since then the Night hath hurl'd
Darkness, Love's shade,

Over its enemy the Day, and made
The world

Just such a blind and shapeless thing

As 'twas before the light did from darkness spring.

Let us employ its treasure

And make shade pleasure: