Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ANNIVERSE: AN ELEGY, by HENRY KING (1592-1669)


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ANNIVERSE: AN ELEGY, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: So soon grown old! Hast thou been six years dead?
Last Line: (like me) with no arithmetic but tears.
Subject(s): Anniversaries


So soon grown old! hast thou been six years dead?
Poor earth, once by my Love inhabited!
And must I live to calculate the time
To which thy blooming youth could never climb,
But fell in the ascent! yet have not I
Studied enough thy loss's history.

How happy were mankind, if Death's strict laws
Consum'd our lamentations like the cause!
Or that our grief, turning to dust, might end
With the dissolved body of a friend!

But sacred Heaven! O, how just thou art
In stamping death's impression on that heart,
Which through thy favours would grow insolent,
Were it not physic'd by sharp discontent.
If, then, it stand resolv'd in thy decree,
That still I must doom'd to a desert be,
Sprung out of my lone thoughts, which know no path
But what my own misfortune beaten hath; --
If thou wilt bind me living to a corse,
And I must slowly waste; I then of force
Stoop to thy great appointment, and obey
That will which nought avails me to gainsay.

For whilst in sorrow's maze I wander on,
I do but follow life's vocation.
Sure we were made to grieve: at our first birth,
With cries we took possession of the earth;
And though the lucky man reputed be
Fortune's adopted son, yet only he
Is Nature's true-born child, who sums his years
(Like me) with no arithmetic but tears.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net