 | CHAP. VI. Poems on several subjects |  |
CHAP. VI.
[1]
There is an evil I have often seenBelow the sun, that common is to men:
2
A man whom God gives honour wealth and ease,And wants for nothing that his heart might please;
Yet God denies him pow'r to use the same;
But strangers thereto right and title claim:
This is a strange and sordid vanity;
An ill disease, as in the world can be.
3
If one man should an hundred children have,And many days, yea many years, should live,
325
And have no burial, may be understood
To be far worse than an untimely birth:
4
For he comes in with vanity, and forthAgain in darkness he departs away;
And fame his name doth in oblivion lay.
5
Moreover he hath never seen the sun,Nor any thing at all hath ever known:
This hath more rest in dark oblivion's shade,
Than th'other ever in his lifetime had.
6
Yea, tho' he live a thousand years twice told,Yet with his eyes did never good behold:
Do not all mortals to one place descend?
What's made of dust, in dust again must end.
7
Man's labour all is for his mouth; yet heHis appetite can never satisfy.
8
What hath the wise more than the fool? what hathThe poor that walk within the living's path?
9
The eye sight's better, tho' it soon expireThan is the wand'ring of the soul's desire:
This also is a very vanity,
And a vexation of the mind, surely.
10
That which hath been it is already nam'd,'Tis known that man was by the Highest fram'd:
Therefore he may not once with him contend;
For he in no ways can himself defend.
11
Since many things do increase vanity,What can a man be bettered thereby?
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For who is he can tell what's good for manIn this frail life, all his life days so vain,
Which as a shadow he doth spend away?
For who is he can tell a man what may
Be after him, when he is dead and gone,
Into his stead here underneath the sun?
| CHAP. VI. Poems on several subjects | |