XCI Distiches
River is time in water; as it came,
Still so it flows; yet never is the same.
I wake, and so new live; a night’s protection
Is a new wonder, whiles a resurrection.
The sun’s up; yet myself and God most bright 5
I can’t see; I’m too dark, and He’s too light.
Let devout prayér cast me to the ground,
So shall I yet to heaven be nearer found.
Clay, sand, and rock seem of a different birth;
So men; some stiff, some loose, some firm; all earth! 10
By red, green, blue, which sometimes paint the air,
Guilt, pardon, Heaven, the rainbow does declare.
The world’s a prison; no man can get out;
Let the atheist storm then; Heaven is round about.
The rose is but the flower of a briar; 15
The good man has an Adam to his sire.
The dying mole, some say, opens his eyes;
The rich, till ’tis too late, will not be wise.
The sick hart eats a snake, and so grows well;
Repentance digests sin, and man ’scapes hell. 20
Flies, oft removed, return. Do they want fear,
Or shame, or memory? Flies are everywhere.
Pride cannot see itself by mid-day light;
The peacock’s tail is farthest from his sight.
The swallow’s a quick arrow, that may show 25
With what an instant swiftness life doth flow.
The nightingale’s a quire, no single note;
O various power of God in one small throat!
The silkworm’s its own wonder; without loom
It does provide itself a silken room. 30
The moon is the world’s glass; in which ’twere strange
If we saw her’s and saw not our own change.
Herodotus is history’s fresh youth;
Thucydides is judgment, age, and truth.
In sadness, Machiavel, thou didst not well, 35
To help the world to run faster to hell.
The Italian’s the world’s gentleman, the Court
To which thrift, wit, lust, and revenge resort.
Bogs, purgatory, wolves, and ease, by fame
Are counted Ireland’s earth, mistake, curse, shame. 40
The Indies, Philip, spread not like thy robe;
Art thou the new horizon to the globe?
Down, pickaxe; to the depths for gold let’s go;
We’ll undermine Peru. Is’nt heaven below?
Who gripes too much casts all upon the ground; 45
Too great a greatness greatness doth confound.
All things are wonder since the world began;
The world’s a riddle, and the meaning’s man.
Barten Holyday.