Is this a life, to break thy sleep, <br />To rise as soon as day doth peep? <br />To tire thy patient ox or ass <br />By noon, and let thy good days pass, <br />Not knowing this, that Jove decrees <br />Some mirth, t' adulce man's miseries? <br />--No; 'tis a life to have thine oil <br />Without extortion from thy soil; <br />Thy faithful fields to yield thee grain, <br />Although with some, yet little pain; <br />To have thy mind, and nuptial bed, <br />With fears and cares uncumbered <br />A pleasing wife, that by thy side <br />Lies softly panting like a bride; <br />--This is to live, and to endear <br />Those minutes Time has lent us here. <br />Then, while fates suffer, live thou free, <br />As is that air that circles thee; <br />And crown thy temples too; and let <br />Thy servant, not thy own self, sweat, <br />To strut thy barns with sheaves of wheat. <br />--Time steals away like to a stream, <br />And we glide hence away with them: <br />No sound recalls the hours once fled, <br />Or roses, being withered; <br />Nor us, my friend, when we are lost, <br />Like to a dew, or melted frost. <br />--Then live we mirthful while we should, <br />And turn the iron age to gold; <br />Let's feast and frolic, sing and play, <br />And thus less last, than live our day. <br />Whose life with care is overcast, <br />That man's not said to live, but last; <br />Nor is't a life, seven years to tell, <br />But for to live that half seven well; <br />And that we'll do, as men who know, <br />Some few sands spent, we hence must go, <br />Both to be blended in the urn, <br />From whence there's never a return.<br /><br />Robert Herrick<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-paranaeticall-or-advisive-verseto-his-friend-m/
