English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Alban
227. Life
T
Less than a span;
In his conception wretched, from the womb
So to the tomb;
Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years
With cares and fears.
Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
But limns on water, or but writes in dust.
What life is best?
To dandle fools:
The rural parts are turn’d into a den
Of savage men:
And where’s a city from foul vice so free,
But may be termed the worst of all the three?
Or pains his head:
Those that live single, take it for a curse
Or do things worse:
Some would have children: those that have them moan
Or wish them gone:
What is it, then, to have, or have no wife,
But single thraldom or a double strife?
Is a disease:
To cross the seas to any foreign soil,
Peril and toil:
Wars with their noise affright us: when they cease,
We are worse in peace;—
What then remains, but that we still should cry
For being born, or being born, to die?