Life is a Poet's fable,
And all her days are lies
Stolen from death's reckoning table,
For I die as I speak,
Death times the notes that I do break.
Childhood doth die in youth,
And youth in old age dies,
I thought I liv'd in truth:
But I die, now I see,
Each age of death makes one degree.
Farewell the doting score,
Of worlds arithmetic,
Life, I'll trust thee no more,
Till I die, for thy sake,
I'll go by death's new almanac.
This instant of my song,
A thousand men lie sick,
A thousand knells are rung:
And I die as they sing,
They are but dead and I dying.
Death is but lifes decay,
Life time, time wastes away,
Then reason bids me say: 
That I die, though my breath
Prolongs this space of ling'ring death.