Are nursed by baseness: Thou art by no means valiant;
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork

Of a poor worm: Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provok'st.

Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust: Happy thou art not:
For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get;
And what thou hast, forget'st: Thou art not certain;
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects P,
After the moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And Death unloads thee: Friends hast thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

Do curse the gout, serpigo 4, and the rheum,

For ending thee no sooner: Thou hast nor youth, nor age;

But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,

Dreaming on both : for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palsied eldr; and when thou art old, and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

5-iii. 1.

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows, and in miseries:

29-iv. 3.

And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Who is so full of grace, that it flows over
On all that need?

All is oblique;

There's nothing level in our cursed natures,
But direct villany.

P Affects, affections. a Leprous eruptions.

30-v. 2.

27-iv. 3.

. Old age.

41.

Human corruption.

The world is grown so bad,

That wrens may prey where eagles dare not perch.

42.

Human actions viewed by Heaven.

If pow'rs divine

Behold our human actions, (as they do,)

I doubt not then, but innocence shall make
False accusation blush, and tyranny
Tremble at patience.

43.

Provocation against Heaven.

24-i. 3.

13-iii. 2.

The heavens do low'r upon you, for some ill;
Move them no more, by crossing their high will3.

If the great gods be just, they shall assist
The deeds of justest men.

45.

35-iv. 5.

30-ii. 1.

Reverence due to Heaven.

Shall we serve heaven

5-ii. 2.

With less respect than we do minister

To our gross selves?

46. The wretchedness of human dependence.

O how wretched

Is that poor man, that hangs on princes' favours!
There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspéct of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have;
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.

25-iii. 2.

47. The proffered means of Heaven to be embraced. The means, that heaven yields, must be embraced, And not neglected; else, if heaven would,

"Also in Horeb ye provoked the Lord to wrath, so that the Lord was angry with you to have destroyed you."-Deut.ix.8. แ Many times did he deliver them; but they provoked him with their counsel, and were brought low for their iniquity." -Ps. cvi. 43.

And we will not, heaven's offer we refuse;

The proffer'd means of succour and redress.

48.

Time.

17-iii. 2.

What's past, and what's to come, is strew'd with

husks,

And formless ruin of oblivion.

49.

The same.

26-iv. 5.

Time. I,-that please some, try all; both joy, and

terror,

Of good and bad; that make, and unfold, error.

50.

13-iv. Chorus.

The same.

The end crowns all;

26-iv. 5.

And that old common arbitrator, Time,

Will one day end it.

Minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years,
Pass'd over to the end they were created,

Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.

52.

Time produces ingratitude.

Time hath a wallet at his back,

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes;

23-ii. 4.

Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done: Perséverance

Keeps honour bright: To have done, is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery.

26-iii. 3.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before; In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Nativity once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,

And time that gave, doth now his gift confound.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow!
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.

54.

Time, its fleetness.

It is ten o'clock:

Poems.

Thus may we see, how the world wags:
'Tis but an hour ago, since it was nine;
And after an hour more, 't will be eleven;
And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale.

55.

Time tedious to the afflicted.

10-ii. 7.

Short time seems long, in sorrow's sharp sustaining, Though woe be heavy, yet it seldom sleeps,

And they that watch, see time how slow it creeps.

Poems.

We play the fools with the time; and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds, and mock us.

19-ii. 2.

Mis-shapen Time, copesmate of ugly night,
Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care;
Eater of youth, false slave to false delight,
Base watch of woes, sin's pack-horse, virtue's snare ;
Thou nursest all, and murderest all, that are.

Time's glory is to calm contending kings;
To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light;
To stamp the seal of time on aged things;
To wake the morn, and centinel the night;
To wrong the wronger, till he render right;
To ruinate proud buildings, with thy hours,
And smear with dust their glittering golden towers:
To fill with worm-holes stately monuments;
To feed oblivion with decay of things;
To blot old books, and alter their contents;
To pluck the quills from ancient ravens' wings;
To dry the old oak's sap, and cherish springs;
To spoil antiquities of hammer'd steel,
And turn the giddy round of fortune's wheel:

To show the beldame daughters of her daughter;
To make the child a man, the man a child;
To slay the tiger, that doth live by slaughter;
To tame the unicorn, and lion wild;

To mock the subtle, in themselves beguil'd;
To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,
And waste huge stones with little water-drops.
Why work'st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage,
Unless thou could'st return to make amends?
One poor retiring minute in an age,

Would purchase thee a thousand thousand friends;
Lending him wit, that to bad debtors lends.

58.

Farewell and Welcome.

Time is like a fashionable host,

Poems.

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand; And with his arms out-stretch'd, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer: Welcome ever smiles,

And farewell goes out sighing.

26-iii. 3.

59.

The past and future.

O thoughts of men accurst!

Past, and to come, seem best; things present, worst.

60.

Futurity wisely concealed.

19-i. 3.

O heaven! that one might read the book of fate;
And see the revolution of the times

Make mountains level, and the continent

(Weary of solid firmness) melt itself

Into the sea! and, other times, to see

The beachy girdle of the ocean

Too wide for Neptune's hips; how chances mock,

And changes fill the cup of alteration

With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,

The happiest youth,-viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,-
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.
19-iii. 1.

61.

The future anticipated by the past.

There is a history in all men's lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceased: