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61

[VVhat is this life?]

Love doth repress the motions and withhold the slipperiness of youth. Aug. Manual. cap. 19.

1

VVhat is this life?
A scene of strife;
A theatre of sorrow;
On which we play
Perhaps to day
But break a limb to morrow:

2

Weak stage of Ice
For flatteries
To cheat and juggle on!
Which vanish ere
They can appear,
And as they come, are gone.

3

What safety can
Thou yield poor man?
That tread's thee with such joy;
What are the treasures
Of all the pleasures
Which ere they'r tasted, cloy.
62

4

Then happy he
That can be free
By potent counter-charms:
And nimbly leap
And so escape
Thy still approching harms.

5

But all those whom
Love hath ore'come,
Contemn thy Magick, and
Do bravely flee
Thy tyranny
And in full freedom stand.

6

Oh happy mind
That leave's behind
Those things that creep below:
And clamber's up
By constant hope
Where reall pleasures flow.

7

Then youth no more
Obtaine's a power
To cheat the roving sight;
But reason crown'd
And so inthron'd
Doth solely bid what's right.
63

Epigram. 16.

Prince of the passions, royall Love! who, when
Thou pleasest, canst thus metamorphise men:
Lust make's her vassailes beasts: thou contrary,
Make'st each heart where thou raigne'st a Deity.
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