SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 1554-1586. LOVE IS DEAD. RING out your bells, let mourning shews be spread, All Love is dead, infected Weep, neighbours, weep, do you not hear it said His death-bed peacock's folly, His winding-sheet is shame, His sole executor blame. From so ungrateful fancy, Let dirge be sung, and trentals richly read, And wrong his tomb ordaineth My mistress' marble heart; SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. Which epitaph containeth, From them that use men thus, Alas! I lie, rage has this error bred- Love is not dead but sleepeth Where she his counsel keepeth Therefore from so vile fancy, FRANCIS, LORD BACON. 1560-1626. THE WORLD. THE world's a bubble, and the life of man In his conception wretched, from the womb, Cursed from his cradle, and brought up to years Who then to frail mortality shall trust, Yet, whilst with sorrow here we live oppressed, Courts are but only superficial schools, The rural part is turned into a den Of savage men: And where's a city from foul vice so free, Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed, Or pains his head; Those that live single take it for a curse, Or do things worse: These would have children;-those that have them, moan, Or wish them gone: What is it, then, to have, or have no wife, But single thraldom, or a double strife? ROBERT, EARL OF ESSEX. Our own affections still at home to please, To cross the seas to any foreign soil, Wars with their noise affright us; when they cease, What then remains, but that we still should cry, ROBERT, EARL OF ESSEX. 1567-1601. SONNET. THE ways on earth have paths and turnings known; But all men's thoughts do teach her to suspect. |