What is our life?
Orlando Gibbons, Sir Walter Raleigh
What is our life? a play of passion:
Our mirth? the music of division
Our mothers’ wombs the tyring-houses be
Where we are drest for this short comedy:
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is
That sits and marks whoe’er doth act amiss:
Our graves, that hide us from the searching sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done:
Thus march we playing to our latest rest
Only we die in earnest, — that’s no jest