rain a point, and sit astride,
To take thee kindly in between;
And then the signs will be thirteen.

THE EPITAPH.

Here, five foot deep, lies on his back
A cobbler, star-monger, and quack;
Who to the stars in pure good-will
Does to his best look upward still.
Weep, all you customers that use
His pills, his almanacs, or shoes:
And you that did your fortunes seek,
Step to his grave but once a week:
This earth, which bears his body's print,
You'll find has so much virtue in't,
That I durst pawn my ears 't will tell
Whate'er concerns you full as well,
In physic, stolen goods, or love,
As he himself could, when above.

XXVIII. A MEDITATION UPON A BROOM-STICK.

The remainder of the title is "According to the Style and Manner of
the Honourable Robert Boyle's _Meditations_", and is intended as a
satire on the style of that philosopher's lucubrations.

This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that
neglected corner, I once knew in a nourishing state in a forest: it was
full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs: but now, in vain does
the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that withered
bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk. 'Tis now at best but the reverse
of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on the earth,
and the root in the air: 'tis now handled by every dirty wench,
condemned to do her drudgery, and, by a capricious kind of fate,
destined to make other things clean, and be nasty itself. At length,
worn to the stumps in the service of the maids, 'tis either thrown out
of doors, or condemned to the last use of kindling a fire. When I
beheld this, I sighed and said within myself, surely mortal man is a
broom-stick; nature sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a
thriving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper
branches of this reasoning vegetable, till the axe of intemperance has
lopped off his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk. He then
flies to art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural
bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew on his head.
But now should this our broomstick pretend to enter the scene, proud of
those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered with dust, though
the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we should be apt to
ridicule and despise its vanity. Partial judges that we are of our own
excellencies, and other m