Who fhuts his hand, hath loft his gold: Who goes to bed, and doth not pray, Who by afperfions throw a stone Who looks on ground with humble eyes, When the hair is sweet through pride or luft, The powder doth forget the duft. Take one from ten, and what remains? In fhallow waters heaven doth show: M 73. Affliction. Y God, I read this day, That planted Paradife was not so firm And strengthen it in every age, When waves do rife, and tempests rage. At first we lived in pleasure; Thine own delights thou didst to us impart : There is but joy and grief; If either will convert us, we are thine: Furnish thy table to thy mind. Affliction then is ours; We are the trees, whom shaking fastens more, While bluftering winds deftroy the wanton bowers And ruffle all their curious knots and store. My God, fo temper joy and woe, That thy bright beams may tame thy bow. 74. Mortification. OW foon doth man decay! When clothes are taken from a cheft of sweets Those clouts are little winding-sheets, Which do confign and send them unto death. When boys go first to bed, They step into their voluntary graves; Sleep binds them faft; only their breath Succeffive nights, like rolling waves, Convey them quickly, who are bound for death. When youth is frank and free, And calls for mufic, while his veins do fwell, That mufic fummons to the knell, When man grows staid and wise, Getting a house and home, where he may move That dumb inclosure maketh love When age grows low and weak, Marking his grave, and thawing every year, A chair or litter fhows the bier Which shall convey him to the house of death. Man, ere he is aware, Hath put together a folemnity, And dreft his hearfe, while he has breath Yet, Lord, instruct us so to die That all these dyings may be life in death. 75. Decay. WEET were the days, when thou didst lodge with Lot, Struggle with Jacob, fit with Gideon, Advise with Abraham, when thy power could not Encounter Mofes' ftrong complaints and moan : Thy words were then, Let me alone. One might have fought and found thee presently At fome fair oak, or bush, or cave, or well: Is my God this way? No, they would reply ; He is to Sinai gone, as we heard tell: Lift, ye may hear great Aaron's bell. But now thou dost thyself immure and close I fee the world grows old, when as the heat Cold fin ftill forcing it, till it return And calling Juftice, all things burn. 76. Mifery. ORD, let the Angels praise thy name. Man is a foolish thing, a foolish thing; Folly and Sin play all his game. His house still burns; and yet he still doth fing, Man is but grass, He knows it, fill the glass. How canft thou brook his foolishness? Not he he knows, where he can better be, Than to ferve thee in fear. What strange pollutions doth he wed, And make his own? as if none knew, but he. No man fhall beat into his head That thou within his curtains drawn canst see : They are of cloth, Where never yet came moth. The best of men, turn but thy hand For one poor minute, stumble at a pin : They would not have their actions scann'd, any forrow tell them that they fin, Nor Though it be small, And measure not their fall. |