Tixall Poetry.
11
When you have wep'd your elegyes upon
The carcases of Troy and Babylon,
And writt your grand child epytaphes, to tell
What monuments did once at Memphys dwell:
When you shall trace the genialogyes
Of Cyprian, Persian, Lymnian dyetyes:
When you shall see at Crete and Palastine,
False Jove his tombe, and true Jehova's shrine:
And shall discover the mechanick cheate
Of worthyly still hanging Mahomett;
Remember you are man, nor thinke to fly,
Or scape th' immortal foe, Mortality.
But thinke, that as you see the shadow doe
In each sunne-dyall full as much as you,
Yet, though it eastwards post, ther's none will say
The shadow gaines the light, or winnes the day:
So traveling but makes us here beneath
Resemble more the images of death:
Though Eagypts sunne may us to mummy burne,
Arabian fumes can nere to phoenix turne.
Oh three times happy that contented man,
Who, measuring all the world with one sole spann,
The carcases of Troy and Babylon,
And writt your grand child epytaphes, to tell
What monuments did once at Memphys dwell:
When you shall trace the genialogyes
Of Cyprian, Persian, Lymnian dyetyes:
When you shall see at Crete and Palastine,
False Jove his tombe, and true Jehova's shrine:
And shall discover the mechanick cheate
Of worthyly still hanging Mahomett;
Remember you are man, nor thinke to fly,
Or scape th' immortal foe, Mortality.
But thinke, that as you see the shadow doe
In each sunne-dyall full as much as you,
Yet, though it eastwards post, ther's none will say
The shadow gaines the light, or winnes the day:
So traveling but makes us here beneath
Resemble more the images of death:
Though Eagypts sunne may us to mummy burne,
Arabian fumes can nere to phoenix turne.
Oh three times happy that contented man,
Who, measuring all the world with one sole spann,
