Church-Monuments

While that my soul repairs to her devotion,

Here I entombe my flesh, that it

May take acquaintance of this heap of dust;

To which the blast of death's incessant motion,

Fed with the exhalation of our crimes,

Drives all at last.

Therefore I gladly

My bodie to this school, that it may learn To spell his elements, and finde his

Written in dustie heraldrie and lines;

Which dissolution sure doth best discern,

Comparing dust with dust, and earth with earth.

These laugh at Jeat, and Marble put for signes,

To sever the good fellowship of dust,

And spoil the meeting.  What shall point out them,

When they shall bow, and kneel, and fall down

To kisse those heaps, which now they have in trust?

Deare flesh, while I do pray, learn here thy

And true descent; that when thou shalt grow fat,

And wanton in thy cravings, thou mayst know,

That flesh is but the glasse, which holds the

That measures all our time; which also shall Be crumbled into dust.  Mark here below,

How tame these ashes are, how free from lust,

That thou mayst fit thyself against thy fall.