rue age is reverend worship to thy grave.

Be patient in extreame adversitie,
(Mans chiefest credit growes by dooing well).
Be not high-minded in prosperitie;
Falshood abhorre, no lying fable tell.
Give not thyselfe to sloth, (the sinke of shame,
The moath of time, the enemie to fame).

This leare I learned of a bel-dame Trot,
(When I was yong and wylde as now thou art),
But her good counsell I regarded not,
I markt it with my eares, not with my hart.
But now I finde it too-too true (my sonne),
When my age-withered spring is almost done.

Behold my gray head, full of silver haires,
My wrinckled skin, deepe furrowes in my face,
Cares bring old age, old age increaseth cares;
My time is come, and I have run my race:
Winter hath snow'd upon my hoarie head,
And with my winter all my joyes are dead.

And thou love-hating boy, (whom once I loved),
Farewell, a thousand-thousand times farewell;
My teares the marble-stones to ruth have moved;
My sad complaints the babling ecchoes tell:
And yet thou wouldst take no compassion on mee,
Scorning that crosse which love hath laid upon mee.

The hardest steele with fier doth mend his misse,
Marble is mollifyde with drops of raine;
But thou (more hard than steele or marble is),
Doost scorne my teares, and my true love disdaine,
Which for thy sake shall everlasting bee,
Wrote in the annalls of eternitie.

By this, the night, (with darknes over-spred),
Had drawne the curtaines of her cole-blacke bed;
And Cynthia, muffling her face with a clowd,
(Lest all the world of her should be too proud)
Had taken conge of the sable night,
(That wanting her cannot be halfe so bright.)

When I, poore forlorn man and outcast creature,
(Despairing of my love, despisde of beautie),
Grew malecontent, scorning his lovely feature,
That had disdaind my ever zealous dutie:
I hy'd me homeward by the moone-shine light,
Foreswaring love, and all his fond delight.

FINIS.

THE SHEPHEARDS CONTENT, OR THE HAPPINES OF A HARMLES
LIFE. WRITTEN UPON OCCASION OF THE FORMER
SUBJECT.

Of all the kindes of common countrey life,
Methinkes a shepheards life is most content;
His state is quiet peace, devoyd of strife;
His thoughts are pur