Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900.djvu/518

 And, dearest child, along the day, In every thing you do and say, Obey and please my lord and lady, So God shall love and angels aid ye.

If to these precepts you attend, No second letter need I send, And so I rest your constant friend.

428. For my own Monument

As doctors give physic by way of prevention, Mat, alive and in health, of his tombstone took care; For delays are unsafe, and his pious intention May haply be never fulfill'd by his heir.

Then take Mat's word for it, the sculptor is paid; That the figure is fine, pray believe your own eye; Yet credit but lightly what more may be said, For we flatter ourselves, and teach marble to lie.

Yet counting as far as to fifty his years, His virtues and vices were as other men's are; High hopes he conceived, and he smother'd great fears, In a life parti-colour'd, half pleasure, half care.

Nor to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave, He strove to make interest and freedom agree; In public employments industrious and grave, And alone with his friends, Lord! how merry was he!

Now in equipage stately, now humbly on foot, Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust; And whirl'd in the round as the wheel turn'd about, He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust.