2

EMBLEMA.

Friend faber, cast me a round hollow ball,
Blown full of wind, for emblem of this All;

Adorn it fair, and flourish every part

With flowers and fruits, with brooks, beasts, fish, and fowl,

With rarest cunning of thy curious art:

And grave in gold, about my silver bowl,

Thus rolls the world, the idol of mankind,

Whose fruit is fiction, whose foundation wind.

3

FUIMUS FUMUS.

Where, where are now the great reports
Of those huge haughty earthborn giants?
Where are the lofty towers and forts

Of those proud kings bade Heaven defiance?
When these I to my mind revoke,

Methinks I see a mighty smoke

Thick mounting from quick-burning matter,
Which in an instant winds do scatter.

5

5

4

OMNIA SOMNIA.

Go, silly worm, drudge, trudge, and travel,
Despising pain, so thou may'st gain
Some honour or some golden gravel;
But death the while, to fill his number,
With sudden call takes thee from all,
To prove thy days but dream and slumber.

5

5

MORS MORTIS.

The World and Death one day them cross-disguisèd,
To cozen man, when sin had once beguiled him.
Both called him forth, and questioning advisèd

To say whose servant he would fairly yield him.
Man, weening then but to the World to' have given him, 5 ·
By the false World became the slave of Death ;
But from their fraud he did appeal by faith

TO HIM whose death killed Death, and from the world has driven him.

While in the east, when it is gone,

Appears a clearer sky.

Which soon perceive the little larks,

The lapwing and the snipe,

And tune their songs, like Nature's clerks, 15
O'er meadow, muir, and stripe.

Clear are the highest hills and plain,
The vapours take the vales.

40

That man and beast now seek a place
To save them from the heat.

The herds beneath some leafy tree,
Amidst the flowers they lie ;

The stable ships upon the sea
Tend up their sails to dry.

With gilded eyes and open wings,

The cock his courage shows;

85

The reek throws right up in the air
From every tower and town.