Thomas Lodge - Broadview Press Publisher's Blog

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That whilst I traffic in this world of woes,
My soul no more in lusts may be entrapped.
Great are my faults, Oh me, most wilful witted:
But if each one were just, there were no place
To show thy power that sins might be remitted.
Let then, O Lord, thy mercy quite displace,
The lewd and endless sins I have committed,
Through thine unspeakable and endless grace.
The Second.
Such dark obscured clouds at once encumbered
My mind, my heart, my thoughts from grace
retired
With swarms of sins that never may be
numbered,
That hope of virtue quite in me expired.
When as the Lord of hosts, my gracious Father,
Bent on my dulled powers his beams of
brightness,
And my confused spirits in one did gather
Too long ensnared by vanity and lightness.
A perfect zeal (not office of my senses)
So seized my judgement smothered in his miss,
That Heaven I wished and loathed this earthly jail,
My heart disclaimed vile thoughts and vain
pretences.
And my desires were shut in seemly vail, 1
So that I said, “Lord, what a world is this?”
After such time as he had received his judgement,
he grew into this meditation of the miseries of
1 vail something which obscures or cloaks.
T HOMAS L ODGE
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life, which I dare avow is both worthy the reading
and noting, yea even among the learnedest.
The Third.
A shop of shame, a gain of life-long grief,
A heaven for fools, a hell to perfect wise,
A theatre of blames where death is chief,
A golden cup where poison hidden lies.
A storm of woes without one calm of quiet,
A hive that yieldeth hemlock and no honey,
A booth of sin, a death to those that try it,
A fair where cares are sold withouten money.
A fleshly joy, a grave of rotten bones,
A spring of tears, a let 2 of true delight,
A loss of time, a labyrinth of moans,
A pleasing pain, a prison of the sprite,
Is this my life: why cease I then resolved,
To pray with Paul 3 and wish to be dissolved?
Thus endeth the life of William Longbeard: a
glass 4 for all sorts to look into, wherein the highminded
may learn to know the mean, and corrupt
consciences may read the confusion of their
wickedness. Let this example serve to withdraw
the bad-minded from Bedlam 5 insolence, and
encourage the good to follow godliness, so have I
that fruit of my labour which I desire, and God
shall have the glory, to whom be all praise.
—1593
FINIS.
2 let hindrance, stop.
3 To pray with Paul This might be a reference to any of the places in
his Letters where Paul expresses his desire to abandon the body and
become one with Christ after death: for example, Romans 7:24-8:3; 1
Corinthians 15:50-58; 2 Corinthians 4:8-18.
4 glass mirror.
5 Bedlam mad, insane.