Gray Haires

Welcome gray haires, whose light I gladly trust
To guide me to my peacefull bed of dust:
My lifes bright Stars, whose wakefull eyes shut mine;
Stand on my head as Tapers on my shrine,
The worlds grand noise of nothing (which invades
My soule) exclude from deaths approaching shades;
But as the day is usher'd in by one
And the same Star that shewes the day is done,
This twilight of my head, this doubtfull sphear,
My Bodys Evening, my soules Morning Star,
Th' allay of white amongst the browner haires
As well the birth as death of day declares;
As he whom from the Hill saw the moist Tomb,
Of earth, together with her pregnant womb,
This mingled colour with ambiguous strife
Demonstrates my decaying into life.
Thus life and death compound the world; Each weed
That fades revives by sowing its own seed:
Matter suppos'd the whole Creation
Is nothing but form and privation:
No borrow'd tresses then no cheating dy
Shall to false life my dying locks bely;
I shall a perfect Microcosme grow
When as the Alpes, I crowned am with snow.
I will beleive this white the milky way
Which leads unto the Court of endlesse day.
Then let my life's flame so intensely burn
That all my haires may into ashes turn,
Whence may arise a Phoenix to repay
With Hallelujahs this Eygnean lay.