LIFE'S BREVITY.

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LIFE'S BREVITY.

MARK that swift arrow! how it cuts the air,
How it outruns thy following eye!
Use all persuasions now, and try

If thou canst call it back, or stay it there.
That way it went; but thou shalt find
No track is left behind.

Fool! 'tis thy life, and the fond archer thou.
Of all the time thou'st shot away,

I'll bid thee fetch but yesterday,
And it shall be too hard a task to do.
Besides repentance, what canst find
That it hath left behind?

Our life is carried with too strong a tide;
A doubtful cloud our substance bears,
And is the horse of all our years.
Each day doth on a wingèd whirlwind ride.
We and our glass run out, and must
Both render up our dust.

But his past life who without grief can see;
Who never thinks his end too near;
But says to Fame, "Thou art mine heir;"
That man extends life's natural brevity-
This is, this is the only way

To outlive Nestor in a day.

A. Cowley.

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SIC VITÆ.

SIC VITÆ.

WHAT is the existence of man's 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 Death's cold hand signs his release?

It is a storm-where the hot blood
Outvies in rage the boiling flood;
And each loose 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 grows,
And withers as the leaves disclose;
Whose spring and fall faint seasons keep,
Like fits of waking before sleep;
Then shrinks into that fatal mould
Where its first being was enroll'd.

It is a dream-whose seeming truth
Is moralised in age and youth;
Where all the comforts he can share
Are wandering as his fancies are;
Till in a mist of dark decay
The dreamer vanish quite away.

SIC VITE.

It is a dial-which points out
The sunset, as it moves about;
And shadows out in lines of night
The subtle stages of Time's flight;
Till all-obscuring earth hath laid
His body in perpetual shade.

It is a weary interlude

Which doth short joys, long woes, include;
The world the stage; the prologue tears;
The acts vain hopes and varied fears;
The scene shuts up with loss of breath,
And leaves no epilogue but death.

Dr. Henry King.

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SWEET AND BITTER.

SWEET AND BITTER.

SWEET is the rose, but grows upon a brere;
Sweet is the juniper, but sharp his bough;
Sweet is the eglantine, but pricketh near;
Sweet is the firbloom, but his branches rough;
Sweet is the cyprus, but his rind is tough;
Sweet is the nut, but bitter is his pill;

Sweet is the broom flower, but yet sour enough;
And sweet is moly, but his root is ill;
So, every sweet with sour is tempered still,
That maketh it be coveted the more:
For easy things that may be got at will
Most sorts of men do set but little store.
Why then should I account of little pain,
That endless pleasure shall unto me gain?

E. Spenser.

ILLUSIONS.

ILLUSIONS.

A GOOD that never satisfies the mind,
A beauty fading like the April flow'rs,

A sweet with floods of gall, that run combin'd,
A pleasure passing ere in thought made ours,
An honour that more fickle is than wind,
A glory at opinion's frown that low'rs,
A treasury which bankrupt time devours,
A knowledge than grave ignorance more blind,
A vain delight our equals to command,
A style of greatness, in effect a dream,
A swelling thought of holding sea and land,
A servile lot, deck'd with a pompous name,
Are the strange ends we toil for here below,
Till wisest death make us our errors know.

W. Drummond.

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