Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist Part 34

17. [INCERTI.]

As Egypt's drought by Nilus is redress'd, So thy wise tongue doth comfort the oppress'd.

18. [INCERTI.]

[Like] to speedy posts, bear hence the lamp of life.

19. [DIONYSIUS LYRINENSIS.]

All worldly things, even while they grow, decay; As smoke doth, by ascending, waste away.

20. [INCERTI.]

To live a stranger unto life.

From a _Discourse of Life and Death_: translated from Nierembergius (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 G.o.d 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.

From _Primitive Holiness, set forth in the Life of Blessed Paulinus_ (1654).

1. [AUSONIUS. EPIST. XXIV. 115-16.]

Let me not weep to see thy ravish'd house All sad and silent, without lord or spouse, And all those vast dominions once thine own Torn 'twixt a hundred slaves to me unknown.

2. [AUSONIUS. EPIST. XXIII. 30-1; XXV. 5-9, 14, 17.]

How could that paper sent, That luckless paper, merit thy contempt?

Ev'n foe to foe--though furiously--replies, And the defied his enemy defies.

Amidst the swords and wounds, there's a salute, Rocks answer man, and though hard are not mute.

Nature made nothing dumb, nothing unkind: The trees and leaves speak trembling to the wind.

If thou dost fear discoveries, and the blot Of my love, Tanaquil shall know it not.