THE lopped tree in time may grow again, <br />Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower; <br />The sorest wight may find release of pain, <br />The driest soil suck in some moist'ning shower; <br />Times go by turns and chances change by course, <br />From foul to fair, from better hap to worse. <br /> <br />The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow, <br />She draws her favours to the lowest ebb; <br />Her tides hath equal times to come and go, <br />Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web; <br />No joy so great but runneth to an end, <br />No hap so hard but may in fine amend. <br /> <br />Not always fall of leaf nor ever spring, <br />No endless night yet not eternal day; <br />The saddest birds a season find to sing, <br />The roughest storm a calm may soon allay: <br />Thus with succeeding turns God tempereth all, <br />That man may hope to rise, yet fear to fall. <br /> <br />A chance may win that by mischance was lost; <br />The net that holds no great, takes little fish; <br />In some things all, in all things none are crost, <br />Few all they need, but none have all they wish; <br />Unmeddled joys here to no man befall: <br />Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all.<br /><br />Robert Southwell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/times-go-by-turns/
