Thomas Sackville Dorset (1536 – 1608)
English statesman, courtier, poet and playwright.
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And sorrowing I to see the sommer flowers,
The lively greene, the lusty lease, forlorne,
The sturdy trees so shattred with the showers,
The fieldes so fade, that florisht so beforne:
It taught mee well, all earthly things be borne
To dye the death: for nought long time may last:
The sommer's beauty yeeldes to winter's blast.
Crookebackt hee was, toothshaken, and blere eyed,
Went on three feete, and somtyme, crept on fowre,
With olde lame boanes, that ratled by his syde,
His scalpe all pild, and hee with eld forlore:
His withred fist still knocking at Death's dore,
Fumbling, and driveling, as hee drawes his breath,
For briefe, the shape and messenger of Death.
His drinke, the running streame, his cup, the bare
Of his palme cloasde, his bed, the hard cold ground:
To this poore life was Misery ybound.
So in this way of writing without thinking,
Thou hast a strange alacrity in sinking.
For right will alwayes live, and rise at length,
But wrong can never take deepe roote to last.
The wrathfull winter proching on apace,
With blustering blasts had all ybarde the treene,
And olde Saturnus, with his frosty face
With chilling cold had pearst the tender greene.
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