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The Vanity of the World

False world, thou ly’st: thou canst not lend
          The least delight:
Thy favors cannot gain a friend,
          They are so slight:
Thy morning pleasures make an end
          To please at night:
Poor are the wants that thou supply’st,...

Poet: Francis Quarles
Samson on His Blindness

From “Samson Agonistes”
O LOSS of sight, of thee I must complain!
Blind among enemies, O, worse than chains,
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!
Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annulled, which...

Poet: John Milton
To Myself

From the German by Catherine Winkworth

LET nothing make thee sad or fretful,
      Or too regretful;
            Be still;
What God hath ordered must be right;
Then find in it thine own delight,
            My will.

Why shouldst thou fill...

Poet: Paul Fleming
The Flower

    HOW fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;
    To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
        Grief melts away
        Like snow in May,
    As if there...

Poet: George Herbert
Sonnet: To Cyriack Skinner

Cyriack, this three years’ day, these eyes, though clear,
  To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
  Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot:
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or stars, throughout the year,
  Or man or woman, yet...

Poet: John Milton
Sic Vita

LIKE 1 to the falling of a star,
Or as the flights of eagles are,
Or like the fresh spring’s gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew,
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood,—
E’en such is man, whose borrowed light...

Poet: Henry King
Death the Leveller

   [These verses are said to have “chilled the heart” of Oliver Cromwell.]

THE GLORIES of our blood and state
  Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armor against fate;
  Death lays his icy hand on kings:
      Sceptre and crown
      ...

Poet: James Shirley
Virtue Immortal

Sweet Day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridall of the earth and skie;
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;
                For thou must die.

Sweet Rose, whose hue angrie and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,
Thy root is ever in its...

Poet: George Herbert
On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey

Mortality, behold and fear
What a change of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within these heaps of stones;
Here they lie, had realms and lands,
Who now want strength to stir their hands,
Where from their pulpits sealed with dust...

Poet: Francis Beaumont
“They are all gone”

They are all gone into the world of light,
  And I alone sit lingering here!
Their very memory is fair and bright,
    And my sad thoughts doth clear;

It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast,
  Like stars upon some gloomy grove,—
Or those faint...

Poet: Henry Vaughan