| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. | | | | Poor Soul, the Centre of My Sinful Earth | | By William Shakespeare (1564–1616) |
| | | POOR soul, the centre of my sinful earth, | |
| Sport of these rebel powers that thee array, | |
| Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, | |
| Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? | |
| Why so large cost, having so short a lease, | 5 |
| Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? | |
| Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, | |
| Eat up thy charge? is this thy body’s end? | |
| Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss, | |
| And let that pine to aggravate thy store: | 10 |
| Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; | |
| Within be fed, without be rich no more: | |
| So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, | |
| And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then. | | | | |
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