Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544 – 1590)
French poet.
Through thick and thin, both over hill and plain.
Weakened and wasted to skin and bone.
Will change the pebbles of our puddly thought
To orient pearls.
Yielding more wholesome food than all the messes
That now taste-curious wanton plenty dresses.
Turning our seed-wheat-kennel tares,
To burn-grain thistle, and to vaporie darnel,
Cockle, wild oats, rough burs, corn-cumbring
Tares.
Who well lives, long lives; for this age of ours
Should not be numbered by years, daies, and hours.
Or savage beasts upon a thousand hils.
From the foure corners of the worlde doe haste.
These lovely lamps, these windows of the soul.
Mercy and justice, marching cheek by joule.
The will for deed I doe accept.
I take the world to be but as a stage,
Where net-maskt men do play their personage.
Not that the earth doth yield
In hill or dale, in forest or in field,
A rarer plant.
From north to south, from east to west.
The world's a stage where God's omnipotence,
His justice, knowledge, love, and providence
Do act the parts.
A good turn at need,
At first or last, shall be assur'd of meed.
There is no theam more plentifull to scan
Than is the glorious goodly frame of man.
And swans seem whiter if swart crowes be by.
Or almost like a spider, who, confin'd
In her web's centre, shakt with every winde,
Moves in an instant if the buzzing flie
Stir but a string of her lawn canapie.