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| IS man, the best of creatures, growne the worst? | |
| He once most blessed was, now most accurst: | |
| His whole felicity is endlesse strife, | |
| No peace, no satisfaction crownes his life: | |
| No such delight as other creatures take, | 5 |
| Which their desires can free and happy make: | |
| Our appetites, which seek for pleasing good, | |
| Haue oft their wane and full, their ebbe and floud, | |
| Their calme and stormes: the neuer-constant moone, | |
| The seas, and nimble winds, not halfe so soone, | 10 |
| Incline to change, while all our pleasure rests | |
| In things which vary, like our wau’ring brests. | |
| He who desires that wealth his life may blesse, | |
| Like to a sayler, counts it good successe | |
| To haue more pris’ners which increase his care; | 15 |
| The more his goods, the more his dangers are. | |
| This sayler sees his ship about to drowne, | |
| And he takes in more wares to presse it downe. | |
| Vaine honour is a play of diuers parts, | |
| Whose fained words and gestures please our hearts; | 20 |
| The flatt’red audience are the actor’s friends, | |
| But lose that title when the fable ends. | |
| The faire desire that others should behold | |
| Their clay well featured, their well-temperd mould, | |
| Ambitious mortals make their chiefe pretence, | 25 |
| To be the obiects of delighted sense: | |
| Yet oft the shape and hue of basest things | |
| More admiration moues, more pleasure brings. | |
| Why should we glory to be counted strong? | |
| This is the praise of beasts, the pow’r of wrong: | 30 |
| And if the strength of many were inclos’d | |
| Within our brest, yet when it is oppos’d | |
| Against that force which art or nature frame, | |
| It melts like waxe before the scorching flame. | |
| We cannot in these outward things be blest; | 35 |
| For we are sure to lose them; and the best | |
| Of these contentments no such comforts beares | |
| As may waigh equall with the doubts and feares | |
| Which fixe our minds on that vncertaine day | |
| When these shall faile, most certaine to decay. | 40 |
| From length of life no happinesse can come, | |
| But what the guilty feele, who after doome | |
| Are to the lothsome prison sent againe, | |
| And there must stay to die with longer paine. | |
| No earthly gift lasts after death, but fame; | 45 |
| This gouerns men more carefull of their name | |
| Then of their soules, which their vngodly taste | |
| Dissolues to nothing, and shall proue at last | |
| Farre worse then nothing: prayses come too late | |
| When man is not, or is in wretched state. | 50 |
| But these are ends which draw the meanest hearts: | |
| Let vs search deepe and trie our better parts. | |
| O knowledge, if a heau’n on earth could be, | |
| I would expect to reape that blisse in thee: | |
| But thou art blind, and they that haue thy light | 55 |
| More clearely, know they liue in darksome night. | |
| See, man, thy stripes at schoole, thy paines abroad, | |
| Thy watching and thy palenesse well bestow’d: | |
| These feeble helpes can scholers neuer bring | |
| To perfect knowledge of the plainest thing: | 60 |
| And some to such a height of learning grow, | |
| They die perswaded that they nothing know. | |
| In vaine swifte houres spent in deepe study slide, | |
| Vnlesse the purchast doctrine curbe our pride. | |
| The soule perswaded that no fading loue | 65 |
| Can equall her imbraces, seekes aboue: | |
| And now aspiring to a higher place, | |
| Is glad that all her comforts here are base. | |
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