Classic Poem

CHAPTER II .

Indeed they do presage what will betide,
With the misgiving verdict of misdeeds;
They know a fall will follow after pride,
And in so foul a heart grows many weeds:
Our life is short, quoth they; no, 'tis too long,
Lengthen'd with evil thoughts and evil tongue.

A life must needs be short to them that dies,
For life once dead in sin doth weakly live;
These die in sin, and mask in death's disguise,
And never think that death new life can give;
They say, life dead can never live again:
O thoughts, O words, O deeds, fond, foolish, vain!

Vild life, to harbour where such death abodes,
Abodes worse than are thoughts, thoughts worse than words,
Words half as ill as deeds, deeds sorrow's odes,
Odes ill enchanters of too ill records!
Thoughts, words, and deeds, conjoined in one song
May cause an echo from destruction's tongue.

Quoth they, 'tis chance whether we live or die,
Born or abortive, be or never be;
We worship Fortune, she's our deity;
If she denies, no vital breath have we:
Here are we placed in this orb of death,
This breath once gone, we never look for breath.

Between both life and death, both hope and fear,
Between our joy and grief, bliss and despair,
We here possess the fruit of what is here,
Born ever for to die, and die death's heir:
Our heritage is death annex'd to life,
Our portion death, our death an endless strife.

What is our life, but our life's tragedy,
Extinguish'd in a momentary time?
And life to murder life is cruelty,
Unripely withering in a flowery prime;
An urn of ashes pleasing but the shows,
Once dry, the toiling spirit wandering goes.

Like as the traces of appearing clouds
Gives way when Titan re-salutes the sea,
With new-chang'd flames gilding the ocean's floods,
Kissing the cabinet where Thetis lay:
So fares our life, when death doth give the wound,
Our life is led by death, a captive bound.

When Sol bestrides his golden mountain's top,
Lightening heaven's tapers with his living fire,
All gloomy powers have their diurnal stop,
And never gains the darkness they desire;
So perisheth our name when we are dead,
Ourselves ne'er call'd to mind, our deeds ne'er read.

What is the time we have? what be our days?
No time, but shadow of what time should be,
Days in the place of hours, which never stays,
Beguiling sight of that which sight should see:
As soon as they begin, they have their fine;
Ne'er wax, still wane, ne'er stay, but still decline.

Life may be call'd the shadow of effect,
Because the cloud of death doth shadow it;
Nor can our life approaching death reject,
They both in one for our election sit;
Death follows life in every degree,
But life to follow death you never see.

Come we, whose old decrepit age doth halt,
Like limping winter, in our winter, sin;
Faulty we know we are — tush, what's a fault?
A shadow'd vision of destruction's gin;
Our life begun with vice, so let it end,
It is a servile labour to amend.

We joy'd in sin, and let our joys renew;
We joy'd in vice, and let our joys remain;
To present pleasures future hopes ensue,
And joy once lost, let us fetch back again:
Although our age can lend no youthful pace,
Yet let our minds follow our youthful race.

What though old age lies heavy on our back,
Anatomy of an age-crooked clime,
Let mind perform that which our bodies lack,
And change old age into a youthful time:
Two heavy things are more than one can bear;
Black may the garments be, the body clear.

Decaying things be needful of repair —
Trees eaten out with years must needs decline;
Nature in time with foul doth cloud her fair,
Begirting youthful days with age's twine:
We live; and while we live, come let us joy;
To think of after-life, 'tis but a toy.

We know God made us in a living form,
But we'll unmake, and make ourselves again;
Unmake that which is made, like winter's storm,
Make unmade things to aggravate our pain:
God was our maker, and he made us good,
But our descent springs from another blood.

He made us for to live, we mean to die;
He made the heaven our seat, we make the earth;
Each fashion makes a contrariety,
God truest God, man falsest from his birth:
Quoth they, this earth shall be our chiefest heaven,
Our sin the anchor, and our vice the haven.

Let heaven in earth, and earth in heaven consist,
This earth is heaven, this heaven is earthly heaven;
Repugnant earth repugnant heaven resist,
We joy in earth, of other joys bereaven:
This is the paradise of our delight;
Here let us live, and die in heaven's spite.

Here let the monuments of wanton sports
Be seated in a wantonness' disguise;
Clos'd in the circuit of venereal forts,
To feed the long-starv'd sight of amour's eyes;
Be this the chronicle of our content,
How we did sport on earth, still sport was spent.

But in the glory of the brightest day,
Heaven's smoothest brow sometime is furrowed,
And clouds usurp the clime in dim array,
Darkening the light which heaven had borrowed;
So in this earthly heaven we daily see
That grief is placed where delight should be.

Here lives the righteous, bane unto their lives,
O, sound from forth the hollow cave of woe!
Here lives age-crooked fathers, widow'd wives —
Poor and yet rich in fortune's overthrow:
Let them not live; let us increase their want,
Make barren their desire, augment their scant.

Our law is correspondent to our doom,
Our law to doom, is dooming law's offence;
Each one agreeth in the other's room,
To punish that which strives and wants defence:
This, cedar-like, doth make the shrub to bend,
When shrubs doth waste their force but to contend.

The weakest power is subject to obey;
The mushrooms humbly kiss the cedar's foot,
The cedar flourishes when they decay,
Because her strength is grounded on a root;
We are the cedars, they the mushrooms be,
Unabled shrubs unto an abled tree.

Then sith the weaker gives the stronger place,
The young the elder, and the foot the top,
The low the high, the hidden powers the face,
All beasts the lion, every spring his stop;
Let those which practise contrariety
Be join'd to us with inequality.

They say that we offend, we say they do;
Their blame is laid on us, our blame on them;
They strike, and we retort the strucken blow;
So in each garment there's a differing hem:
We end with contraries, as they begun,
Unequal sharing of what either won.

In this long conflict between tongue and tongue,
Tongue new beginning what one tongue did end,
Made this cold battle hot in either's wrong,
And kept no pausing limits to contend;
One tongue was echo to the other's sound,
Which breathed accents between mouth and ground.

He which hath virtue's arms upon his shield,
Draws his descent from an eternal king:
He knows discretion can make folly yield,
Life conquer death, and vice a captive bring;
The other, tutor'd by his mother sin,
Respects not deeds nor words, but hopes to win.

The first, first essence of immortal life,
Reproves the heart of thought, the eye of sight,
The ear of hearing ill, the mind of strife,
The mouth of speech, the body of despite;
Heart thinks, eyes sees, ears hears, minds meditate,
Mouth utters both the soul and body's hate.

But nature, differing in each nature's kind,
Makes differing hearts, each heart a differing thought;
Some hath she made to see, some folly-blind,
Some famous, some obscure, some good, some naught:
So these, which differeth in each nature's reason,
Had nature's time when time was out of season.

Quoth they, he doth reprove our heart of thinking,
Our eyes of sight, our ears of hearing ill,
Our minds, our hearts, in meditation linking,
Our mouths in speaking of our body's will;
Because heart, sight, and mind do disagree,
He'd make heart, sight, and mind of their decree.

He says, our heart is blinded with our eyes,
Our eyes are blinded with our blinded heart,
Our bodies on both parts defiled lies,
Our mouths the trumpets of our vices' smart;
Quoth he, God is my father, I his son,
His ways I take, your wicked ways I shun.

As meditated wrongs are deeper plac'd
Within the deep core of a wronged mind,
So meditated words is never past
Before their sounds a settled harbour find;
The wicked, answering to the latter words,
Begins to speak as much as speech affords.

One tongue must answer, other tongues reply,
Beginning boasts require an ending fall;
Words lively spoke do sometimes wordless die,
If not, live echoes unto speeches call:
Let not the shadow smother up the deed,
The outward leaf differs from inward seed.

The shape and show of substance and effect
Doth shape the substance in the shadow's hue,
And shadow put in substance will neglect
The wonted shadow of not being true:
Let substance follow substance, show a show,
And let not substance for the shadow go.

He that could give such admonition,
Such vaunting words, such words confirming vaunts,
As if his tongue had mounted to ambition,
Or climb'd the turrets which vain-glory haunts,
Now let his father, if he be his son,
Undo the knot which his proud boasts have spun.

We are his enemies, his chain our hands,
Our words his fetters, and our heart his cave,
Our stern embracements are his servile bands;
Where is the helper now which he should have?
In prison like himself, not to be found,
He wanteth help himself to be unbound.

Then sith thy father bears it patiently,
To suffer torments, grief, rebuke, and blame,
'Tis needful thou should'st bear equality,
To see if meekness harbour in thy name:
Help, father, for thy son in prison lies!
Help, son, or else thy helpless father dies!

Thus is the righteous God and righteous man
Drown'd in oblivion with this vice's region;
God wanteth power (say they) of what we can,
The other would perform that which is vain;
Both fault in one fault, and both alike
Must have the stroke which our law's judgments strike.

He calls himself a son from heaven's descent;
What can earth's force avail 'gainst heaven's defence?
His life by immortality is lent;
Then how can punishment his wrath incense?
Though death herself in his arraignment deck,
He hath his life's preserver at a beck.

As doth the basilisk with poison'd sight
Blind every function of a mortal eye,
Disarm the body's powers of vital might,
Rob heart of thought, make living life to die,
So doth the wicked with their vice's look
Infect the spring of clearest virtue's brook.

This basilisk, mortality's chief foe,
And to the heart's long-knitted artery,
Doth sometimes perish at her shadow's show,
Poisoning herself with her own poison'd eye:
Needs must the sting fall out with over-harming,
Needs must the tongue burn out in over-warming.

So fares it with the practisers of vice,
Laden with many venomous adders' stings,
Sometimes are blinded with their own device,
And tunes that song which their destruction sings;
Their mischief blindeth their mischievous eyes,
Like basilisks, which in their shadow dies.

They go, and yet they cannot see their feet,
Like blinded pilgrims in an unknown way,
Blind in perceiving things which be most meet,
But need nor sight nor guide to go astray:
Tell them of good, they cannot understand;
But tell them of a mischief, that's at hand.

The basilisk was made to blind the sight,
The adder for to sting, the worm to creep,
The viper to devour, the dog to bite,
The nightingale to wake when others sleep;
Only man differs from his Maker's will,
Undoing what is good, and doing ill.

A godlike face he had a heavenly hue,
Without corruption, image without spots;
But now is metamorphosed anew,
Full of corruption, image full of blots;
Blotted by him that is the plot of evil,
Undone, corrupted, vanquish'd by the devil.