Even such is Time, that takes on trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have, And pays us but with age and dust; Who in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days! He has added two other lines expressive of his trust in his resurrection. Their authenticity is confirmed by the writer of the present letter, as well as another writer, enclosing "half a dozen verses, which Sir Walter made the night before his death, to take his farewell of poetry, wherein he had been a scribbler even from his youth." The enclosure is not now with the letter. Chamberlain, the writer, was an intelligent man of the world, but not imbued with any deep tincture of literature. On the same night Rawleigh wrote this distich on the candle burning dimly:-- Cowards fear to die; but courage stout, Rather than live in snuff, will be put out. At this solemn moment, before he lay down to rest, and at the instant of parting from his lady, with all his domestic affections still warm, to express his feelings in verse was with him a natural effusion, and one to which he had long been used. It is peculiar in the fate of Rawleigh, that having before suffered a long imprisonment with an expectation of a public death, his mind had been accustomed to its contemplation, and had often dwelt on the event which was now passing. The soul, in its sudden departure, and its future state, is often the subject of his few poems; that most original one of "The Farewell," Go, soul! the body's guest, Upon a thankless errand, &c. is attributed to Rawleigh, though on uncertain evidence. But another, entitled "The Pilgrimage," has this beautiful passage:-- Give me my scallop-shell of quiet, My staff of truth to walk upon, My scrip of joy immortal diet; My bottle of salvation; My gown of glory, Hope's true gage, And thus I'll take my pilgrimage-- Whilst my soul, like a quiet palmer, Travelleth towards the land of Heaven-- Rawleigh's cheerfulness was so remarkable, and his fearlessness of death so marked, that the Dean of Westminster, who attended him, at first wondering at the hero, reprehended the lightness of his manner, but Rawleigh gave God thanks that he had never feared death, for it was but an opinion and an imagination; and as for the manner of death, he would rather die so than of a burning fever; and that some might have made shows outwardly, but he felt the joy within. The dean says, that he made no more of his death than if he had been to take a journey: "Not," said he, "but that I am a great sinner, for I have been a soldier, a seaman, and a courtier." The writer of a manuscript letter tells us, that the dean declared he died not only religiously, but he found him to be a man as ready and as able to give as to take instruction.