Ecclesiastes, Chapter 12

Thinke of thy Maker in thy better dayes;
Before the vigour of thy age decayes:
Before that sad and tedious time draw nigh,
When thou shalt loath thy life, and wish to die.
Before th'informing Sun, the cheerfull Light,
The various Moone, and Ornaments of Night,
In vaine for thee their shining Tapers beare:
Or fretting drops of Raine deepe furrowes weare.
When they shall tremble, who the House defend:
And the strong Columnes which support it bend:
The Grinders faile, reduced to a few;
The Watch no Objects through their Casements view:
Those Doores shut up that open to the Street;
And when th'unarmed Guarders softly meet:
The Bird of dawning raise thee with his voyce;
Nor thou in women, or their Songs rejoyce.
When thou shalt feare the roughnesse of the way;
When every Peble shall thy passage stay:
When th'Almond-tree his boughs invests with white;
The Locust stoopes: then dead to all delight.
Man must at length to his long home descend:
Behold, the Mourners at his gates attend.
Advise; before the Silver Cord growes slacke;
Before the golden Boule asunder crack:
Before the Pitcher at the fountaine leake;
Or wasted Wheele besides the Cisterne breake.
Man, made of Earth, resolves into the same:
His Soule ascends to God, from whom it came.
O Restlesse Vanitie of Vanities!
All is but Vanitie, the Preacher Cryes.
He who was wise, the People knowledge taught:
His Lines with well-digested Proverbs fraught.
He found out matter to delight the mind:
And every word he writ, by Truth was sign'd.
Wise Sentences are Goads; Nailes closely driven
By grave Instructors: by one Pastor given.
And now my Sonne, be thou admonished
By what thou hast already heard, and read.
There is of making many Bookes no End:
And studious Night th'intentive Spirits spend.
Of all the Sum; feare God, his Lawes obay:
Mans Dutie; to Felicitie the way.
For He shall every worke, each secret thing,
Both good and bad, to publike Judgement bring.