What is our life? a play of passion
Our mirth the music of division
Our mothers' wombs the ’tiring houses be,
Where we are dressed for this short comedy,
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is,
That sits and marks still who doth act amiss
Our graves that hide us from the searching sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done
Thus march we playing to our latest rest
Only we die in earnest, that's no jest.



-The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Agnes Latham (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1962), 51.