Sic Vita [Henry King]

Sic Vita #

Like the falling of a star;
Or as the flights of eagles are;
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue;
Or silver drops of morning dew;
Or like a wind that chafes the flood;
Or bubbles which on water stood;
Even such is man, whose borrowed light
Is srtaight called in, and paid to night.

The wind blows out, the bubble dies;
The spring entombed in autumn lies;
The dew dries up, the star is shot;
The flight is past , and man forgot.

Merci à M. Petit (qui sera votre professeur d'anglais en PT ou PT* l'an prochain) de m'avoir fait découvrir, il y a peu, ce poète du XVIIeme siècle.
Je ne pouvais que partager ma joie avec vous  :-)
Au passage, nous pratiquons un peu l'anglais sur un blog-pas-que-de-physique-chimie, loin de là, tu l'auras compris fidèle ou futur arpenteur de ces lieux ;-)

Quelques compléments bibliographiques :

« Henry King, 1592-1669.
The eldest son on Dr John King, Bishop of London, Henry King and his younger brother John were, like their father, educated at Westminster and Christ Church. They went up to Oxford together as Students of Christ Church, took the degrees of B.A., M.A., B.D., and D.D. together and were both made Canons of Christ Church in 1624.
It is possible that some poems ascribed to Henry were in fact written by John, who died in 1639, the year in which Henry was made Dean of Rochester.
In 1642 King was made Bishop of Chichester [shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War (**)], but was ejected from his see in the next year. [// in the following year, Chichester was besieged and taken by the Parliamentary forces, and the bishop was made prisoner. (*)]
He remained in England, living on the kindness of friends, until the Restoration restored him to Chichester where he died [nine years later (**)] and where he is buried in the Cathedral.
King was a friend of many literary men. His father, who had been chaplain to Egerton,  [John] Donne’s first employer, ordained Donne, and he himself was an executor of Donne’s will.
His poems were published in 1657, anonymously and without their author’s consent. They were republished, still anonymously, in 1664, and, with a title-page ascribing them to Ben Jonson, in 1700. »
(The Metaphysical Poets, Penguin Classics [1957, 1966, 1972], p. 312)

« His poetical fame rests chiefly on the touching elegy in which he has recorded his grief and desolation on the loss of his beloved wife »
(* = English sacred poetry of the olden time, Londres, 1864, p. 117)

« In [1617] he married. His wife whose death in 1624 occasioned his finest poem, The Exequy, was Anne Berkeley, of Throwley in Kent. She bore him six children, of whom only two survived infancy. He almost certainly married again in 1630, but the second union, produced no children. »
(** = Eight Metaphysical Poets, Jack Dalglish, Heinemann, 1961, p. 166)