Poem by Thomas Urquhart

Epigrams. The Third Booke. ¹ 26. The vertuous speech of a diseased man, most patient in his sicknesse

MY flesh still having beene an enemy
Unto my spirit, it should glad my heart,
That paines, which seize now on my body, may
Be profitable to my better part;
For though Diseases seeme at first unpleasant,
They point us out the way, we ought to goe:
Admonish us exactly of our present
Estate: and t'us at last this favour shew,
That they enlarge us from that ruinous,
Close, and darke prison, which confined us.

1. Epigrams. The Third Booke. ¹ 3. We ought always to thinke upon what we are to say, before we utter any thing; the speeches and talk of solid wits, being still pre∣meditated, and never using to forerunne the mind
2. Epigrams. The First Booke. ¹ 19. Ingratitude is such a common vice, that even those who exclame most against it, are not freest of it
3. Epigrams. The Third Booke. ¹ 29. How magnanimous a thing it is, in adversity, patiently to endure, what cannot bee evited
4. Epigrams. The Second Booke. ¹ 5. That a vertuous mind in a deformed body maketh one more beautifull, then a handsome body can doe, endowed with a vicious mind
5. Epigrams. The Second Booke. ¹ 4. How abject a thing it is, for a man to have bin long in the world without giving any proofe either by vertue, or learning, that he hath beene at all

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