Poemata sacra Latinae & Anglicae scripta [by John Saltmarsh] |
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| IV. | Meditat. IV. My dayes are like a shadow that declineth, Psal. 102. |
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 | Poemata sacra |  |
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Meditat. IV. My dayes are like a shadow that declineth, Psal. 102.
My dayes? and why my dayes? good David hold;Thou art too prodigall, thou might'st have told
Me of my houres and minutes: 'las thy chime
Is slow, and cannot lackey with swift time.
And why my dayes? 'Tis true, my dewie Morn
Is Infancie, the time when I was born:
My Noon is Youth; perhaps I then am bright
And wanton as the brisk meridian light:
The Even is my Age; then I decline:
And when the sunne hastens beneath the line
Of my Horizon, then I set, and say,
Ah thus poore mortall close I up my day.
My day? and why my day? Call it my night;
For here we dwell in darknesse, not in light.
The sunne's a starre, and sheds a feeble ray:
If, Lord, we do compare it to thy day,
We sit in shade: mortalitie serves thus
But as a vail drawn betwixt thee and us.
My dayes? why not my day? oh it is rare
If we can live so long to make a paire.
My dayes are like a shadow, ill exprest:
Ev'n I am but a shadow at the best.
Hold me a thousand crystalls, you shall see
So many thousand shadows shed from me:
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That I am shadows most, ev'n shadows all.
My dayes are like a shadow; they and I,
Both, like a pair of shadows, live and die.
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