Page:Poems and ballads (IA poemsballads00swinrich).pdf/133

 If souls once taken, If lives once shaken, Arise, awaken, By night, by day— Why with strong crying And years of sighing, Living and dying, Fast ye and pray? For all your weeping, Waking and sleeping, Death comes to reaping And takes away. Though time rend after Roof-tree from rafter, A little laughter Is much more worth Than thus to measure The hour, the treasure, The pain, the pleasure, The death, the birth; Grief, when days alter, Like joy shall falter; Song-book and psalter, Mourning and mirth. Live like the swallow; Seek not to follow Where earth is hollow Under the earth.