Pocula Castalia The Authors Motto. Fortunes Tennis-Ball. Eliza. Poems. Epigrams. &c. By R. B. [i.e Robert Baron] |
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Upon Birth and Infancy.
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107
Upon Birth and Infancy.
1
Birth is a kind of Resurrection;For Man is buried ere he be brought forth.
Th'membrane that veiles the tender Embrion
Is first its winding sheet, then swadling cloath.
Death ushers in mans life, so that the wombe
Is both his genethliack Inne and Tombe.
2
Birth is a kind of Goal delivery.A Prisoner ere he knowes what's to be free
Man is. Thrice three Moneths doth he cloystered lie
In a maturnall Dungeon, after, he
Lives halfe in nights; whom Lucine forth doth let
Leaves not his darknesse, but exchanges it.
108
3
Gods Commissary Nature doth bestowThe inborn Principalls and Physicall
Dictates of Reason on him, this yee don't know.
And thus alone he proves he's rationall,
He wailes with cries which no salt teares do want
The Ignorance of which he's Ignorant.
4
His lives twilight, or dawning of the DayIn this same wheel or circular is spent,
He sucks, sleeps, cries, Tria sunt omnia.
As if he deem'd Death gain, Life punishment.
He's quiet but sleeping when in jeast he dies,
But when he wakes, and finds he lives, he cries.
5
He is beholding to (though he's by BirthThe Monarch of the whole creation)
Brute Animalls and hospitable earth
Both for his vestments and nutrition.
Being cloath'd he's lull'd asleep by his own cry,
So, ere he 'gins to live, he learns to die.
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