False glozing pleasures, casks of happinesse,
Foolish night-fires, women’s and children’s wishes,
Chases in arras, guilded emptinesse,
Shadows well mounted, dreams in a career,
Embroider’d lyes, nothing between two dishes;
These are the pleasures here.
True earnest sorrows, rooted miseries
Anguish in grain, vexations ripe and blown,
Sure-footed griefs, solid calamities,
Plain demonstrations, evident and cleare,
Fetching their proofs ev’n from the very bone;
These are the sorrows here.
But oh the folly of distracted men,
Who griefs in earnest, joyes in jest pursue;
Preferring, like brute beasts, a loathsome den
Before a court, ev’n that above so cleare,
Where are no sorrows, but delights more true
Then miseries are here!
(George Herbert)
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