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Hark, how the
birds do sing,
And woods do ring!
All creatures
have their joy, and man hath his.
Yet if we rightly
measure,
Man's joy and pleasure
Rather hereafter
than in present is.
To this life things of sense
Make their pretence;
In th' other angels have a right
by birth.
Man ties them both alone,
And makes them
one,
With th' one hand touching heaven, with th'
other earth.
In soul he mounts and flies,
In flesh
he dies.
He wears a stuff whose thread is coarse and
round,
But trimmed with curious lace,
And should
take place
After the trimming, not the stuff and
ground.
Not that he may not here
Taste of the
cheer;
But as birds drink and straight lift up their
head,
So must he sip and think
Of better drink
He may attain to after he is dead.
But as his joys
are double,
So is his trouble.
He hath two
winters, other things but one:
Both frosts and
thoughts do nip
And bite his lip,
And he of all
things fears two deaths alone.
Yet even the greatest
griefs
May be reliefs,
Could he but take them
right, and in their ways.
Happy is he whose heart
Hath found the art
To turn his double pains to double
praise.
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