What on Earth deserves our trust?

Youth and beauty both are dust.

Long we gathering are with pain,

What one moment calls again.

Seven years childless marriage past,

A son, a son is born at last;

So exactly limbed and fair,

Full of good spirits, mien, and air,

As a long life promised,

Yet, in less than six weeks dead.

Too promising, too great a mind

In so small room to be confined:

Therefore, fit in Heaven to dwell,

He quickly broke the prison shell.

So the subtle alchimist,

Can’t with Hermes’ seal resist

The powerful spirit’s subtler flight,

But t’will bid him long good night.

So the Sun if it arise

Half so glorious as his eyes,

Like this infant, takes a shroud,

Buried in a morning cloud.