Wednesday, September 09, 2015
Pilgrims and Strangers
Norman Ault, ed., Elizabethan Lyrics from the Original Texts (1949; rpt. New York: Capricorn Books, 1960), p. 222 (anonymous, from Christ Church Library, Mus. 740, fols. 25v-26r, and 742, fols. 27v-28r):
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Like flowers we spring up fair but soon decaying;
Our days and years are in their prime declining;
Man's life on such uncertainties is founded:
The wheel of fickle fate is never staying;
Time every hour our thread of life untwining:
He that ere now with store of wealth abounded,
Anon through want is wounded.
Wayfaring men we are, pilgrims and strangers,
On earth we have no certain habitation,
Nor keep one constant station;
But, through a multitude of fears and dangers,
We travel up and down towards our ending,
Unto our silent graves mournfully wending.
