English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 227. Life |
| | | Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Alban (1561–1626) |
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| THE WORLD’S a bubble and the life of Man | |
| Less than a span; | |
| In his conception wretched, from the womb | |
| So to the tomb; | |
| Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years | 5 |
| With cares and fears. | |
| Who then to frail mortality shall trust, | |
| But limns on water, or but writes in dust. | |
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| Yet whilst with sorrow here we live opprest, | |
| What life is best? | 10 |
| Courts are but only superficial schools | |
| To dandle fools: | |
| The rural parts are turn’d into a den | |
| Of savage men: | |
| And where’s a city from foul vice so free, | 15 |
| But may be termed the worst of all the three? | |
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| Domestic cares afflict the husband’s bed, | |
| Or pains his head: | |
| Those that live single, take it for a curse | |
| Or do things worse: | 20 |
| Some would have children: those that have them moan | |
| Or wish them gone: | |
| What is it, then, to have, or have no wife, | |
| But single thraldom or a double strife? | |
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| But our affections still at home to please | 25 |
| Is a disease: | |
| To cross the seas to any foreign soil, | |
| Peril and toil: | |
| Wars with their noise affright us: when they cease, | |
| We are worse in peace;— | 30 |
| What then remains, but that we still should cry | |
| For being born, or being born, to die? | |
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