In early youth’s unclouded scene, The brilliant morning of eighteen, With health and sprightly joy elate, We gazed on youth’s enchanting spring, Nor thought how quickly time would bring The mournful period — thirty-eight!
Then the starch maid, or matron sage, Already of the sober age,
Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. These laid the world away; poured out the red Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene, That men call age; and those who would have been, Their sons, they gave, their immortality.
Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth, Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain, Honour has come back, as a king, to earth, And paid his subjects with a royal wage; And Nobleness walks in our ways again; And we have come into our heritage.
Since man with that inconstancy was born, To love the absent, and the present scorn Why do we deck, why do we dress For such short-lived happiness? Why do we put attraction on, Since either way ’tis we must be undone?
Of all the causes which conspire to blind Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools. Whatever Nature has in worth denied, She gives in large recruits of needful pride; For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find What wants in blood and spirits, swell'd with wind; Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, And fills up all the mighty void of sense! If once right reason drives that cloud away, Truth breaks upon us with resistless day; Trust not yourself; but your defects to know, Make use of ev'ry friend—and ev'ry foe.
No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace As I have seen in one autumnal face. Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape, This doth but counsel, yet you cannot scape. If 'twere a shame to love, here 'twere no shame; Affection here takes reverence's name. Were her first years the golden age? That's true, But now she's gold oft tried and ever new. That was her torrid and inflaming time, This is her tolerable tropic clime. Fair eyes, who asks more heat than comes from hence, He in a fever wishes pestilence. Call not these wrinkles, graves; if graves they were, They were Love's graves, for else he is no where. Yet lies not Love dead here, but here doth sit
[Introduction] Lo now! four other acts upon the stage, Childhood, and Youth, the Manly, and Old-age. The first: son unto Phlegm, grand-child to water, Unstable, supple, moist, and cold’s his Nature. The second: frolic claims his pedigree; From blood and air, for hot and moist is he. The third of fire and choler is compos’d, Vindicative, and quarrelsome dispos’d. The last, of earth and heavy melancholy, Solid, hating all lightness, and all folly. Childhood was cloth’d in white, and given to show, His spring was intermixed with some snow. Upon his head a Garland Nature set: Of Daisy, Primrose, and the Violet.
Some that have deeper digg'd love's mine than I, Say, where his centric happiness doth lie; I have lov'd, and got, and told, But should I love, get, tell, till I were old, I should not find that hidden mystery. Oh, 'tis imposture all! And as no chemic yet th'elixir got, But glorifies his pregnant pot If by the way to him befall Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal, So, lovers dream a rich and long delight, But get a winter-seeming summer's night.
Our ease, our thrift, our honour, and our day, Shall we for this vain bubble's shadow pay?
Well then; the promis'd hour is come at last; The present age of wit obscures the past: Strong were our sires; and as they fought they writ, Conqu'ring with force of arms, and dint of wit; Theirs was the giant race, before the Flood; And thus, when Charles return'd, our empire stood. Like Janus he the stubborn soil manur'd, With rules of husbandry the rankness cur'd:
Comment form: