A Household Book of English Poetry: Selected and Arranged with Notes

American poetry; English poetry

So when thou hast, as I
      Commanded thee, done blabbing,
    Because to give the lie                                           75
      Deserves no less than stabbing,
    Stab at thee who that will,
    No stab the soul can kill.

    _Anon._.




VII


1

_MUNDUS QUALIS._

    What is the world? tell, worldling, if thou know it.
    If it be good, why do all ills o’erflow it?
      If it be bad, why dost thou like it so?
    If it be sweet, how comes it bitter then?
    If it be bitter, what bewitcheth men?                              5
      If it be friend, why kills it, as a foe,
    Vain-minded men that over-love and lust it?
    If it be foe, fondling, how dar’st thou trust it?


2

_EMBLEMA._

    Friend faber, cast me a round hollow ball,
    Blown full of wind, for emblem of this All;
      Adorn it fair, and flourish every part
    With flowers and fruits, with brooks, beasts, fish, and fowl,
      With rarest cunning of thy curious art:                          5
    And grave in gold, about my silver bowl,
    _Thus rolls the world, the idol of mankind,
    Whose fruit is fiction; whose foundation wind_.


3

_FUIMUS FUMUS._

    Where, where are now the great reports
      Of those huge haughty earthborn giants?
    Where are the lofty towers and forts
      Of those proud kings bade Heaven defiance?
    When these I to my mind revoke,                                    5
    Methinks I see a mighty smoke
    Thick mounting from quick-burning matter,
    Which in an instant winds do scatter.


4

_OMNIA SOMNIA._

    Go, silly worm, drudge, trudge, and travel,
      Despising pain, so thou may’st gain
    Some honour or some golden gravel;
    But death the while, to fill his number,
      With sudden call takes thee from all,                            5
    To prove thy days but dream and slumber.


5

_MORS MORTIS._

    The World and Death one day them cross-disguisèd,
      To cozen man, when sin had once beguiled him.
    Both called him forth, and questioning advisèd
      To say whose servant he would fairly yield him.
    Man, weening then but to the World to’ have given him,             5
      By the false World became the slave of Death;
      But from their fraud he did appeal by faith
    To HIM whose death killed Death, and from the world has driven him.
              _Joshua Sylvester._




VIII

_THE STORY OF A SUMMER DAY._


    O perfect Light, which shaid away
    The darkness from the light,
    And set a ruler o’er the day,
    Another o’er the night;

    Thy glory, when the day forth flies,                               5
    More vively does appear,
    Than at midday unto our eyes
    The shining sun is clear.

    The shadow of the earth anon
    Removes and drawis by,                                            10
    While in the east, when it is gone,
    Appears a clearer sky.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

A Household Book of English Poetry: Selected and Arranged with Notes

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