225

Pride's mirror.

Pride hath no other glass

To show itself but pride; for supple knees
Feed arrogance, and are the proud man's fees.

26-iii. 3.

226

Neglect of departed friends.

As we do turn our backs

From our companion, thrown into his grave;
So his familiars to his buried fortunes

Slink all away; leave their false vows with him,
Like empty purses pick'd: and his poor self,

A dedicated beggar to the air,

With his disease of all-shunn'd poverty,
Walks, like contempt, alone.

27-iv. 2.

227

Decay of pomp.

Vast confusion waits

16-iv. 3.

(As doth a raven on a sick-fallen beast) The imminent decay of wrested pomp.*

The ostent† of our love, which, left unshown,
Is often left unloved.

229

Sufferings softened by sympathy.

30-iii. 6.

When we our betters see bearing our woes,
We scarcely think our miseries our foes.
Who alone suffers, suffers most i' the mind ;~
Leaving free things, and happy shows, behind:
But then the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip,
When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.
34-iii. 6.

Infirmity doth still neglect all office,

Whereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves, When nature, being oppress'd, commands the mind, To suffer with the body.

231

34-ii. 4.

Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men
The things that are not? O Error, soon conceived,
Thou never com'st unto a happy birth,
But kill'st the mother that engender'd thee.

232

Truth and Beauty, their excellence.

Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix'd;
Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay;
But best is best, if never intermix'd.

233 Man values only what he sees and knows.
'Tis very pregnant,*

The jewel that we find, we stoop and take it,
Because we see it; but what we do not see,
We tread upon, and never think of it.

Poems.

5-ii. 1.

234 Friendship with the wicked, dangerous. The love of wicked friends converts to fear; That fear, to hate; and hate turns one, or both, To worthy danger, and deserved death.

17-v. 1.

The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb;
What is her burying grave, that is her womb:
And from her womb, children of divers kind,
We sucking on her natural bosom find;
Many for many virtues excellent,

None but for some, and yet all different.

236

35-ii. 3.

238

For this being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
Two such opposed foes encamp them still
In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will ;
And, where the worser is predominant,
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

35-ii. 3. Real happiness, where chiefly found. They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing : It is no mean happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean ; superfluity comes sooner* by white hairs, but competency lives longer.

9-i. 2. 239

Ambition and content. Thoughts tending to Ambition, they do plot Unlikely wonders. Thoughts tending to Content, flatter themselves,That they are not the first of fortune's slaves, Nor shall not be the last ; like silly beggars, Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame, That many have, and others must sit there :t And in this thought they find a kind of ease, Bearing their own misfortune on the back Of such as have before endured the like. 17-7. 5.

*

*

240

Misguided expectations. How mightily, sometimes, we make us comforts of our losses ! And how mightily, some other times, we drown our gain in tears !

11-iy. 3. 241 Timidity, incapable of adventure. Impossible be strange attempts, to those That weigh their pains in sense; and do suppose, What hath been cannot be. I

11-i. 1. 242

The love of life.

O our lives' sweetness ! That with the pain of death we'd hourly die, Rather than die at once !

'Tis good for men to love their present pains,
Upon example; so the spirit is eased:

And, when the mind is quicken'd, out of doubt,
The organs, though defunct and dead before,
Break up their drowsy grave, and newly move
With casted slough and fresh legerity.*

20-iv. 1.

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only, doth backward pull
Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.

245

Fortitude in trials.

Wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss,

11-i. 1.

But cheerly seek how to redress their harms,
What though the mast be now blown over-board,
The cable broke, the holding anchor lost,
And half our sailors swallow'd in the flood?
Yet lives our pilot still: Is't meet, that he
Should leave the helm, and, like a fearful lad,
With tearful eyes, add water to the sea,

And give more strength to that which hath too much;
Whiles, in his moar, the ship splits on the rock,
Which industry and courage might have saved?

246

Grief unavailing.

23-v. 4.

When remedies are past, the griefs are ended,
By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended.
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone,
Is the next way to draw new mischief on.
What cannot be preserved when fortune takes,
Patience her injury a mockery makes.

[thief;

The robb'd, that smiles, steals something from the He robs himself, that spends a bootless grief.

37-i. 3.

248

Delays dangerous.

That we would do,

We should do when we would; for this would changes,
And hath abatements and delays as many,

As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this should is like a spendthrift's sigh,
That hurts by easing.

36-iv. 7.

How poor are they, that have not patience !—
What wound ever did heal, but by degrees?

250

Evils, wrongly ascribed to Heaven.

37-ii. 3.

This is the excellent foppery of the world! that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour), we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers,* by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on.f

34-i. 2.

How oft, when men are at the point of death,
Have they been merry? which their keeperst call
A lightning before death.

252

The influence of infection.

35-v. 3.