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,
And yet thou vaunt’st, and yet thou vy’st
With heaven: fond earth, thou boasts; false world...
-
-
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 might in part my grief have eased.
Inferior to the vilest now become
Of man or worm... -
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 to-day with sorrow
About to-morrow,
My heart?
One watches... -
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 were no such cold thing.Who would have thought my shrivelled heart
Could have... -
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 I argue not
Against Heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but... -
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
Is straight called in, and paid to-night.
The wind blows out, the bubble dies,... -
[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
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and... -
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 grave,
And all must die.Sweet Spring, full of sweet dayes and...
-
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
They preach, “In greatness is no trust.”
Here ’s an acre sown indeed
With the... -
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 beams in which this hill is drest
After the sun’s remove.I see them walking...