Life is a Poet's fable

Life is a Poet's fable,

And all her days are lies

Stolen from death's reckoning table,

For I die as I speak,

Death times the notes that I do break.

Childhood doth die in youth,

And youth in old age dies,

I thought I liv'd in truth:

But I die, now I see,

Each age of death makes one degree.

Farewell the doting score,

Of worlds arithmetic,

Life, I'll trust thee no more,

Till I die, for thy sake,

I'll go by death's new almanac.

This instant of my song,

A thousand men lie sick,

A thousand knells are rung:

And I die as they sing,

They are but dead and I dying.

Death is but lifes decay,

Life time, time wastes away,

Then reason bids me say:

That I die, though my breath

Prolongs this space of ling'ring death.