Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury (or Chirbury) KB (March 3, 1583 – August 20, 1648) was an Anglo-Welsh soldier, diplomat, historian, poet and religious philosopher of the Kingdom of England.
TO HIS WATCH, WHEN HE COULD NOT SLEEP
Herbert of Cherbury
Uncessant Minutes, whil’st you move you tell
The time that tells our life, which though it run
Never so fast or farr, you’r new begun
Short steps shall overtake; for though life well
May scape his own Account, it shall not yours,
You are Death’s Auditors, that both divide
And summ what ere that life inspir’d endures
Past a beginning, and through you we bide
The doom of Fate, whose unrecall’d Decree
You date, bring, execute; making what’s new
Ill and good, old, for as we die in you,
You die in Time, Time in Eternity.
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UPON COMBING HER HAIR
Herbert of Cherbury
Breaking from under that thy cloudy veil,
Open and shine yet more, shine out more clear,
Thou glorious golden-beam-darting hair,
Even till my wonder-stricken senses fail.
Shoot out in light and shine those rays on far,
Thou much more fair than is the Queen of Love,
When she doth comb her in her sphere above,
And from a planet turns a blazing-star.
Nay, thou art greater too, more destiny
Depends on thee than on her influence;
No hair thy fatal hand doth now dispense
But to some one a thread of life must be.
While gracious unto me, though both dost sunder
Those glories which, if they united were,
Might have amazed sense, and shewest each hair,
Which if alone had been too great a wonder.
And now spread in their goodly length, she appears
No creature which the earth might call her own,
But rather one that in her gliding down
Heaven’s beams did crown to shew us she was theirs.
And come from thence, how can they fear time’s rage
Which in his power else on earth most strange
Such golden treasure doth to silver change
By that improper alchemy of age?
But stay, methinks new beauties do arise,
While she withdraws these glories which were spread.
Wonder of beauties, set thy radiant head
And strike out day from thy yet fairer eyes.