| |
| PEACE! peace! it is not so. Thou dost miscall | |
| Thy physic: pills that change | |
| Thy sick accessions into settled health; | |
| This is the great elixir, that turns gall | |
| To wine and sweetness, poverty to wealth; | 5 |
| And brings man home when he doth range. | |
| Did not He, Who ordain’d the day, | |
| Ordain night too? | |
| And in the greater world display | |
| What in the lesser He would do? | 10 |
| All flesh is clay, thou know’st; and but that God | |
| Doth use His rod, | |
| And by a fruitful change of frosts and showers | |
| Cherish, and bind thy pow’rs, | |
| Thou wouldst to weeds and thistles quite disperse, | 15 |
| And be more wild than is thy verse. | |
| Sickness is wholsome, and crosses are but curbs | |
| To check the mule, unruly man; | |
| They are heaven’s husbandry, the famous fan, | |
| Purging the floor which chaff disturbs. | 20 |
| Were all the year one constant sunshine, we | |
| Should have no flowers; | |
| All would be drought and leanness; not a tree | |
| Would make us bowers. | |
| Beauty consists in colours; and that’s best | 25 |
| Which is not fix’d, but flies and flows; | |
| The settled red is dull, and whites that rest | |
| Something of sickness would disclose. | |
| Vicissitude plays all the game; | |
| Nothing that stirs, | 30 |
| Or hath a name, | |
| But waits upon this wheel; | |
| Kingdoms too have their physic, and for steel | |
| Exchange their peace and furs. | |
| Thus doth God key disorder’d man, | 35 |
| Which none else can, | |
| Tuning his breast to rise or fall; | |
| And by a sacred, needful art | |
| Like strings stretch ev’ry part, | |
| Making the whole most musical. | 40 |
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