Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Edward Farr, ed. Select Poetry of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. 1845.

“That Christ did, that thou must die”

LXXIII. C. T.

THAT Christ did, that thou must die,

The worldly fraude, the heauenly ioy,

The endles bitter paines of hell,

Tosse them, as tennis-balles, in minde.

But hereat some perhaps will sticke,

And say, who alwaies thinkes of death

Shall neuer looke with cheereful face,

But swarte, and wan, and halfe as dead.

Whereby appeares, whom nature hath

Forbidden beautie’s siluer show,

To good more prone and ready be

Than they whom nature hath decoerd.

The one, I will not maserate,

Saith he, my plum-round physnomie;

My straight-made lims I will not crooke,

To think of death, of deuill, or God.

The other saith, My fauour is harde,

My body croukte, of all despisde;

The world I leaue; it loues not me;

I ioy to think on heauenly things.

The happy blessed man

Doth loth this worldly life;

The wicked stryues in what he can

To whet still pleasure’s knife.

The wicked wighte bewailes the sight

Of deadly naked dart;

To blessed plight it bringes delight

Who gently yeeldes his hart.