The coffin 's a safe harbour, where he rides Land-bound, below cross winds, or churlish tides. For grief, sprung up with life, was man's half-brother, Fed by the taste, brought forth by sin, the mother. And since the first seduction of the wife, God did decree to grief a lease for life; Which patent in full force continue must, Till man that disobey'd revert to dust. 70 So that life's sorrows, ratifi'd by God, Cannot expire, or find their period, Until the soul and body disunite, And by two diff'rent ways from each take flight. But they dissolved once, our woes disband, Th' assurance cancell'd by one fatal hand; Soon as the passing bell proclaims me dead, My sorrows sink with me, lie buried In the same heap of dust, the self-same urn Doth them and me alike to nothing turn. 80 If then of these I might election make Whether I would refuse, and whether take, Rather than like a sullen anchorite I would live cas'd in stone, and learn to write A _Prisoner's story_, which might steal some tears From the sad eyes of him that reads or hears; Give me a peaceful death, and let me meet My freedom seal'd up in my winding sheet. Death is the pledge of rest, and with one bail Two prisons quits, the Body and the Jail. 90 [_An Essay._] This piece stands to some work of Donne's much as others of King's do to the lyrics of the greater poet. The couplets are more enjambed than in _The Woes of Esay_, and the metaphysicality is of the satiric kind. It should not be needful, but may be well, to say that King had no actual experience of prisons. On the other side of the matter the piece might, but by no means need, belong to the series connected with his wife's death.] _The Labyrinth._ Life is a crooked labyrinth, and we Are daily lost in that obliquity. 'Tis a perplexed circle, in whose round Nothing but sorrows and new sins abound. How is the faint impression of each good Drown'd in the vicious channel of our blood? Whose ebbs and tides by their vicissitude Both our great Maker and ourselves delude. O wherefore is the most discerning eye Unapt to make its own discovery? 10 Why is the clearest and best judging mind In her own ills' prevention dark and blind? Dull to advise, to act precipitate, We scarce think what to do, but when too late. Or if we think, that fluid thought, like seed, Rots there to propagate some fouler deed. Still we repent and sin, sin and repent; We thaw and freeze, we harden and relent. Those fires, which cool'd to-day, the morrow's heat Rekindles. Thus frail nature does repeat 20 What she unlearnt, and still, by learning on, Perfects her lesson of confusion.