Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AN ELEGY OCCASIONED BY SICKNESS, by HENRY KING (1592-1669)


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AN ELEGY OCCASIONED BY SICKNESS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Well did the prophet ask, lord, what is man?
Last Line: Shall death's black night to endless lustre turn.
Subject(s): Grief; Sorrow; Sadness


WELL did the Prophet ask, Lord, what is Man?
Implying by the question none can
But God resolve the doubt, much less define
What elements this child of dust combine.

Man is a stranger to himself, and knows
Nothing so naturally as his woes.
He loves to travel countries, and confer
The sides of Heaven's vast diameter:
Delights to sit in Nile or Baetis' lap,
Before he hath sail'd over his own map;
By which means he returns, his travel spent,
Less knowing of himself than when he went.
Who knowledge hunt kept under foreign locks,
May bring home wit to hold a paradox,
Yet be fools still. Therefore, might I advise,
I would inform the soul before the eyes:
Make man into his proper optics look,
And so become the student and the book.
With his conception, his first leaf, begin;
What is he there but complicated sin?
When riper time, and the approaching birth
Ranks him among the creatures of the earth,
His wailing mother sends him forth to greet
The light, wrapp'd in a bloody winding sheet;
As if he came into the world to crave
No place to dwell in, but bespeak a grave.

Thus like a red and tempest-boding morn
His dawning is: for being newly born
He hails th' ensuing storm with shrieks and cries,
And fines for his admission with wet eyes.

How should that plant, whose leaf is bath'd in tears,
Bear but a bitter fruit in elder years?
Just such is this, and his maturer age
Teems with event more sad than the presage.
For view him higher, when his childhood's span
Is raised up to youth's meridian;
When he goes proudly laden with the fruit
Which health, or strength, or beauty contribute;
Yet, -- as the mounted cannon batters down
The towers and goodly structures of a town, --
So one short sickness will his force defeat,
And his frail citadel to rubbish beat.
How does a dropsy melt him to a flood,
Making each vein run water more than blood?
A colic wracks him like a northern gust,
And raging fevers crumble him to dust.
In which unhappy state he is made worse
By his diseases than his Maker's curse.
God said in toil and sweat he should earn bread,
And without labour not be nourished:
There, though like ropes of falling dew, his sweat
Hangs on his lab'ring brow, he cannot eat.

Thus are his sins scourg'd in opposed themes,
And luxuries reveng'd by their extremes.
He who in health could never be content
With rarities fetch'd from each element,
Is now much more afflicted to delight
His tasteless palate, and lost appetite.

Besides, though God ordain'd, that with the light
Man should begin his work, yet he made night
For his repose, in which the weary sense
Repairs itself by rest's soft recompense.
But now his watchful nights and troubled days
Confused heaps of fear and fancy raise.
His chamber seems a loose and trembling mine;
His pillow quilted with a porcupine;
Pain makes his downy couch sharp thorns appear,
And ev'ry feather prick him like a spear.
Thus, when all forms of death about him keep,
He copies death in any form, but sleep.

Poor walking-clay! hast thou a mind to know
To what unblest beginnings thou dost owe
Thy wretched self? fall sick a while, and than
Thou wilt conceive the pedigree of Man.
Learn shalt thou from thine own anatomy,
That earth his mother, worms his sisters be.
That he's a short-liv'd vapour upward wrought,
And by corruption unto nothing brought.
A stagg'ring meteor by cross planets beat,
Which often reels and falls before his set;
A tree which withers faster than it grows;
A torch puff'd out by ev'ry wind that blows;
A web of forty weeks spun forth in pain,
And in a moment ravell'd out again.

This is the model of frail man: then say
That his duration's only for a day:
And in that day more fits of changes pass,
Than atoms run in the turn'd hour-glass.

So that th' incessant cares which life invade
Might for strong truth their heresy persuade,
Who did maintain that human souls are sent
Into the body for their punishment:
At least with that Greek sage still make us cry,
Not to be born, or, being born, to die.

But Faith steers up to a more glorious scope,
Which sweetens our sharp passage; and firm hope
Anchors our torn barks on a blessed shore,
Beyond the Dead Sea we here ferry o'er.
To this, Death is our pilot, and disease
The agent which solicits our release.

Though crosses then pour on my restless head,
Or ling'ring sickness nail me to my bed:
Let this my thought's eternal comfort be,
That my clos'd eyes a better light shall see.
And when by fortune's or by nature's stroke
My body's earthen pitcher must be broke,
My soul, like Gideon's lamp, from her crack'd urn
Shall Death's black night to endless lustre turn.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


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