POEM: A FAREWELL



Oft have I mused, but now at length I find
Why those that die, men say, they do depart:
Depart: a word so gentle to my mind,
Weakly did seem to paint Death's ugly dart.

But now the stars, with their strange course, do bind
Me one to leave, with whom I leave my heart;
I hear a cry of spirits faint and blind,
That parting thus, my chiefest part I part.

Part of my life, the loathed part to me,
Lives to impart my weary clay some breath;
But that good part wherein all comforts be,
Now dead, doth show departure is a death:

Yea, worse than death, death parts both woe and joy,
From joy I part, still living in annoy.

* * *

Finding those beams, which I must ever love,
To mar my mind, and with my hurt to please,
I deemed it best, some absence for to prove,