Like to a silkworm of one year; Or like a wronged lover's tear; Or on the waves a rudder's dint; Or like the sparkles of a flint: Or like to little cakes perfum'd; Or fireworks made to be consum'd; Even such is man, and all that trust In weak and animated dust. The silkworm droops; the tear's soon shed; The ship's way lost; the sparkle dead; The cake is burnt; the firework done; And man as these as quickly gone. STRODE. [IX.] Like to the rolling of an eye: Or like a star shot from the sky; Or like a hand upon a clock; Or like a wave upon a rock; Or like a wind; or like a flame; Or like false news which people frame; Even such is man, of equal stay Whose very growth leads to decay. The eye is turned; the star down bendeth; The hand doth steal; the wave descendeth; The wind is spent; the flame unfir'd; The news disprov'd; man's life expir'd. [X.] Like to an eye which sleep doth chain; Or like a star whose fall we faine [ = feign]; Or like a shade on A[t]haz' watch: Or like a wave which gulfs do snatch; Or like a wind or flame that's past; Or smother'd news confirm'd at last; Even so man's life, pawn'd in the grave, Waits for a rising it must have The eye still sees; the star still blazeth; The shade goes back; the wave escapeth; The wind is turn'd, the flame reviv'd, The news renew'd; and man new liv'd. [_Sic Vita._] On this famous piece see Introduction. Only the first form is attributed to King and appears in his _Poems_; but it also appears not merely in the singular higgledy-piggledy called the poems of Francis Beaumont, 1653, but in the earlier and better edition of 1640. Simon Wastell was a schoolmaster who had been at Queen's College, Oxford; and who in 1629 appended these sets of verses to a book then entitled _Microbiblion_. The first is claimed by Quarles, who also wrote another in the form. William Browne's version was not published till 1815, and the authors of the two from the Malone MS. are unknown. The group is probably the palmary example in English of that coterie-and school-verse which distinguished the seventeenth century. The King-Beaumont form is certainly the best and probably the original. (It will be observed that X is _palinodic_ to the others. It is, _with_ IX, attributed as a single piece to Strode and entitled 'On Death and Resurrection' in MS. Malone 16, fol. 35, and Dobell's _Poetical Works of W. Strode_). _My Midnight Meditation._ Ill busi'd man! why shouldst thou take such care To lengthen out thy life's short kalendar? When every spectacle thou look'st upon Presents and acts thy execution. Each drooping season and each flower doth cry, Fool! as I fade and wither, thou must die.