VVhat is th' Existence of Mans life?
But open war, or slumber'd strife.
Where sickness to his sense presents
The combat of the Elements:
And never feels a perfect Peace
Till deaths cold hand signs his release.
It is a storm where the hot blood
Out-vies in rage the boyling flood;
And each loud Passion of the mind
Is like a furious gust of wind,
Which beats his Bark with many a Wave
Till he casts Anchor in the Grave.
It is a flower which buds and growes,
And withers as the leaves disclose;
Whose spring and fall faint seasons keep,
Like fits of waking before sleep:
Then shrinks into that fatal mold
Where its first being was enroll'd.
It is a dream, whose seeming truth
Is moraliz'd in age and youth:
Where all the comforts he can share
As wandring as his fancies are;
Till in a mist of dark decay
The dreamer vanish quite away.
It is a Diall, which points out
The Sun-set as it moves about:
And shadowes out in lines of night
The subtile stages of times flight,
Till all obscuring earth hath laid
The body in perpetual shade.
It is a weary enterlude
Which doth short joyes, long woes include.
The World the Stage, the Prologue tears,
The Acts vain hope, and vary'd fears:
The Scene shuts up with loss of breath,
And leaves no Epilogue but Death.

A Salutation Of His Majesties Ship The Soveraign

Move on thou floating Trophee built to fame!
And bid her trump spread thy Majestick name;
That the blew Tritons, and those petty Gods
Which sport themselves upon the dancing floods,
May bow as to their Neptune, when they feel
The awful pressure of thy potent keel.
Great wonder of the time! whose form unites,
In one aspect two warring opposites,
Delight and horrour; and in them portends
Diff'ring events both to thy foes and friends:
To these thy radiant brow, Peaces bright Shrine,
Doth like that golden Constellation shine,
Which guides the Sea man with auspicious beams,
Safe and unshipwrackt through the troubled streams.
But, as a blazing Meteor, to those
It doth ostents of blood and death disclose.
For thy rich Decks lighten like Heavens fires,
To usher forth the thunder of thy Tires.
O never may cross wind, or swelling wave
Conspire to make the treach'rous sands thy grave:
Nor envious rocks in their white foamy laugh
Rejoyce to wear thy losses Epitaph.
But may the smoothest, most successful gales
Distend thy sheet, and wing thy flying sailes:
That all designes which must on thee embark,
May be securely plac't as in the Ark.
May'st thou, where ere thy streamers shall display,
Enforce the bold disputers to obey:
That they whose pens are sharper then their swords,
May yield in fact what they deny'd in words.
Thus when th' amazed world our Seas shall see
Shut from Usurpers, to their own Lord free,
Thou may'st returning from the conquer'd Main,
With thine own Triumphs be crown'd Soveraign.