Life and Existence

I know death hath ten thousand several doors For men to take their exits. 1

Prosperity doth bewitch men, seeming clear; But seas do laugh, show white, when rocks are near.

Call for the robin redbreast and the wren, Since o’er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men.

Underneath this stone doth lie As much beauty as could die; Which in life did harbor give To more virtue than doth live.

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy! My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.

Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry: For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.

Come my Celia, let us prove, While we can, the sports of love; Time will not be ours forever, He at length our good will sever. Spend not then his gifts in vain; Suns that set may rise again, But if once we lose this light, ’Tis with us perpetual night.

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun, Which was my sin, though it were done before? Wilt thou forgive that sin; through which I run, And do run still: though still I do deplore? When thou hast done, thou hast not done, For, I have more.

Show me, dear Christ, Thy spouse, so bright and clear.

Since I am coming to that holy room, Where, with thy choir of saints forevermore, I shall be made thy music; as I come I tune the instrument here at the door, And what I must do then, think here before.

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.

What if this present were the world’s last night?

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men.

One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so, For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow, Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

If poisonous minerals, and if that tree, Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us, If lecherous goats, if serpents envious Cannot be damn’d; alas; why should I be?

All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, Despair, law, chance, hath slain.

At the round earth’s imagin’d corners, blow Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise From death, you numberless infinities Of souls.

I am a little world made cunningly Of elements, and an angelic sprite.

And new philosophy calls all in doubt, The element of fire is quite put out; The sun is lost, and the earth, and no man’s wit Can well direct him where to look for it. And freely men confess that this world’s spent, When in the planets, and the firmament They seek so many new; then see that this Is crumbled out again to his atomies. ’Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone; All just supply, and all relation: Prince, subject, Father, Son, are things forgot.

Her pure, and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, That one might almost say, her body thought.

Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee, As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, To taste whole joys.

Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.

Who ever loves, if he do not propose The right true end of love, he’s one that goes To sea for nothing but to make him sick.