Page:Essays - Abraham Cowley (1886).djvu/44

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COWLEY'S ESSAYS.

V.

Where honour or where conscience does not bind,

No other law shall shackle me?
Slave to myself I will not be,
Nor shall my future actions be confined
By my own present mind.
Who by resolves and vows engaged does stand
For days that yet belong to fate,
Does like an unthrift mortgage his estate
Before it falls into his hand;
The bondman of the cloister so
All that he does receive does always owe.
And still as time come in it goes away,
Not to enjoy, but debts to pay.
Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell
Which his hour's work, as well as hour's does tell!
Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell.

VI.

If Life should a well-ordered poem be

(In which he only hits the white