Great Maladies, Long Medicines.

The longer thread of life we spin,
The more occasion still to sin.

Love-sick I am, and must endure
A desperate grief, that finds no cure.
Ah me! I try; and trying, prove
No herbs have power to cure love.
Only one sovereign salve I know,
And that is death, the end of woe.

Physicians say repletion springs
More from the sweet than sour things.

Those ills that mortal men endure
So long, are capable of cure,
As they of freedom may be sure;
But, that denied, a grief, though small,
Shakes the whole roof, or ruins all.

Though long it be, years may repay the debt;
None loseth that which he in time may get.

Leech boasts, he has a pill, that can alone
With speed give sick men their salvation:
'Tis strange, his father long time has been ill,
And credits physic, yet not trusts his pill:
And why? he knows he must of cure despair,
Who makes the sly physician his heir.