For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get,
And what thou hast forget'st: Thou art not certain,
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
After the moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee: Friend hast thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,
For ending thee no sooner: Thou hast no youth nor age,
But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limbs, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this,
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even."[83]

Then collate yet further some more passages from the Essays:

"They perceived her (the soul) to be capable of diverse
passions, and agitated by many languishing and painful
motions ... subject to her infirmities, diseases, and
offences, even as the stomach or the foot ... dazzled and
troubled by the force of wine; removed from her seat by the
vapours of a burning fever.... She was seen to dismay and
confound all her faculties by the only biting of a sick dog,
and to contain no great constancy of discourse, no virtue,
no philosophical resolution, no contention of her forces,
that might exempt her from the subjection of these
accidents...."[84]

"It is not without reason we are taught to take notice of
our sleep, for the resemblance it hath with death. How
easily we pass from waking to sleeping; with how little
interest we lose the knowledge of light, and of
ourselves...."[85]

"Wherefore as we from that instant take a title of being,
which is but a twinkling in the infinite course of an
eternal night, and so short an interruption of our perpetual
and natural condition, death possessing whatever is before
and behind this moment, and also a good part of this moment,
"[86]

"Every human nature is ever in the middle between being born
and dying, giving nothing of itself but an obscure
appearance and shadow, and an uncertain and weak
opinion."[87]

Compare finally the line "Thy best of rest is sleep" (where the word
rest seems a printer's error) wi