All things are altered, nothing is destroy'd,
The shifted scene for some new show employ'd.
Then, to be born, is to begin to be
Some other thing we were not formerly:
And what we call to die, is not t' appear,
Nor be the thing that formerly we were.
Those very elements, which we partake,
Alive, when dead some other bodies make;
Translated grow, have sense, or can discourse;
But death on deathless substance has no force.
That forms are chang'd, I grant; that nothing can
Continue in the figure it began;
The golden age, to silver was debas'd;
To copper that; our metal came at last.
The face of places, and their forms, decay;
And that is solid earth, that once was sea;
Seas, in their turn, retreating from the shore,
Make solid land, what ocean was before;
And far from strands are shells of fishes found,
And rusty anchors fix'd on mountain ground:
And what were fields before, now wash'd and worn
By falling floods from high, to valleys turn
And crumbling still descend to level lands;
And lakes and trembling bogs are barren sands:
And the parch'd desert floats in streams unknown;
Wond'ring to drink of waters not her own.
All changing species should my song recite;
Before I ceas'd would change the day to night.
Nations and empires flourish and decay.
By turns command, and in their turns obey;
Time softens hardy people; time again
Hardens to war a soft, unwarlike train.
And, therefore, I conclude, whatever lies,
In earth, or flits in air, or fills the skies,
All suffer change ; and we, that are of soul
And body mix'd, are members of the whole.
Then when our sires, or grandsires, shall forsake
The forms of men, and brutal figures take,
Thus hous'd, securely let their spirits rest,
Nor violate thy father in the beast,
Thy friend, thy brother, any of thy kin,
