| |
| O LORD! 1 thou art our home, to whom we fly, | |
| And so hast alwaies beene from age to age: | |
| Before the hills did intercept the eye, | |
| Or that the frame was vp of earthly stage, | |
| One God thou wert, and art, and still shall bee; | 5 |
| The line of time it doth not measure thee. | |
| |
| Both death and life obey thy holy love, | |
| And visit in their turnes as they are sent: | |
| A thousand yeares with thee they are no more | |
| Then yesterday, which, ere it is, is spent; | 10 |
| Or as a watch by night, that course doth keepe, | |
| And goes and comes vnwares to them that sleep. | |
| |
| Thou carriest man away as with a tide; | |
| Then downe swim all his thoughts that mounted high, | |
| Much like a mocking dreame that will not bide, | 15 |
| But flies before the sight of waking eye, | |
| Or as the grasse that cannot term obtaine | |
| To see the summer come about againe: | |
| |
| At morning faire, it musters on the ground; | |
| At euen, it is cut downe and laid along; | 20 |
| And though it spared were, and fauour found, | |
| The weather should performe the mower’s wrong: | |
| Thus hast thou hang’d our life on brittle pins, | |
| To let vs know it will not beare our sins. | |
| |
| Thou buriest not within obliuion’s tombe | 25 |
| Our trespasses, but entrest them aright; | |
| Ev’n those that are conceiu’d in darknesse’ wombe | |
| To thee appeare as done by broad daylight: | |
| As a tale told, which sometimes men attend, | |
| And sometimes not, our life steales to an end. | 30 |
| |
| The life of man is threescore yeares and ten, | |
| Or, if that he be strong, perhaps fourescore; | |
| Yet all things are but labour to him then, | |
| New sorrowes still come on, pleasures no more. | |
| Why should there be such turmoile and such strife | 35 |
| To spin in length this feeble line of life? | |
| |
| But who considers duely of thine ire? | |
| Or doth the thoughts thereof wisely embrace? | |
| For thou, O God, art a consuming fire: | |
| Fraile man, how can he stand before thy face? | 40 |
| If thy displeasure thou dost not refraine, | |
| A moment brings all back to dust againe. | |
| |
| Teach vs, O Lord, to number well our daies, | |
| Thereby our hearts to wisdome to apply; | |
| For that which guides man best in all his waies | 45 |
| Is meditation of mortality: | |
| This bubble light, this vapour of our breath, | |
| Teach vs to consecrate to howre of death. | |
| |
| Return vnto vs, Lord, and ballance now | |
| With daies of ioy our daies of misery; | 50 |
| Help vs right soone,—our knees to thee we bow, | |
| Depending wholly on thy clemency: | |
| Then shall thy seruants both with heart and voice | |
| All the daies of their life in thee reioice. | |
| |
| Begin thy worke, O Lord, in this our age,— | 55 |
| Show it vnto thy seruants that now liue; | |
| But to our children raise it many a stage, | |
| That all the world to thee may glory giue: | |
| Our handy worke likewise, as fruitfull tree, | |
| Let it, O Lord, blessed, not blasted, be. | 60 |
