From A "Discourse Of Life And Death": Translated From Nierembergius

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Title:     From A "Discourse Of Life And Death": Translated From Nierembergius
Author: Henry Vaughan [More Titles by Vaughan]

1654.

1. [INCERTI.]

Whose hissings fright all Nature's monstrous ills;
His eye darts death, more swift than poison kills.
All monsters by instinct to him give place,
They fly for life, for death lives in his face;
And he alone by Nature's hid commands
Reigns paramount, and prince of all the sands.

 

2. [INCERTI.]

The plenteous evils of frail life fill the old:
Their wasted limbs the loose skin in dry folds
Doth hang about: their joints are numb'd, and through
Their veins, not blood, but rheums and waters flow.
Their trembling bodies with a staff they stay,
Nor do they breathe, but sadly sigh all day.
Thoughts tire their hearts, to them their very mind
Is a disease; their eyes no sleep can find.

 

3. [MIMNERMUS.]

Against the virtuous man we all make head,
And hate him while he lives, but praise him dead.

 

4. [INCERTI.]

Long life, oppress'd with many woes,
Meets more, the further still it goes.

 

5. [JUVENAL. SATIRE X. 278-286.]

What greater good had deck'd great Pompey's crown
Than death, if in his honours fully blown,
And mature glories he had died? those piles
Of huge success, loud fame, and lofty styles
Built in his active youth, long lazy life
Saw quite demolish'd by ambitious strife.
He lived to wear the weak and melting snow
Of luckless age, where garlands seldom grow,
But by repining Fate torn from the head
Which wore them once, are on another shed.

 

6. [MENANDER. FRAGM. CXXVIII.]

Whom God doth take care for, and love,
He dies young here, to live above.

 

7. [INCERTI.]

Sickness and death, you are but sluggish things,
And cannot reach a heart that hath got wings.

[The end]
Henry Vaughan's poem: From A "Discourse Of Life And Death": Translated From Nierembergius

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