C. Charles Best

THE POORE man belou’d, for virtue approu’d,

Right blessed is he;

Where couetous chuff, who neuer hath enough,

Accursed shall be.

Who goodnesse reiecteth, and euil effecteth,

Shall fall in the pit:

No plenty of pence shall free him from thence;

No power, nor wit.

Both vnespassable and vnsatiable

That gulph will appeare;

Imbogg’d he shall be, where nought he shall see

But horror and feare.

Adam vnstable and Eve variable,

The very first time,

By falling from God deserued this rod;

Oh! horrible crime!

For had they adhered to God, and him feared,

By keeping his reede,

Then death had not come on the man or the woman,

Or any their seede.

But when as the man from God’s will began

Basely to reuolt,

For his grieuous sin death came rushing in,

And on him laid holt.

This was the great crime, which at the first time,

By craft of the deuill,

Did bring in the seed of sickness and need,

And all other evill.

This was the sinne, which first did begin

Our parents to kill,

And heauenly food, prepared for our goud,

Did vtterly spill.

Vnhappy the fate, which first such a state

Such sorrow did bring,

To him that had lost so much to our cost,

Our heauenly King.

The credulous Eve, ’twas she that did giue

The cause of such euill,

Hoping that honor would come more vpon her,

Decerned by the deuill.

Beleeuing of him did make her to sinne,

To all our great losse;

For mankind ere sence receiued from hence

An horrible crosse.

For all the nations, through all generations

Which after haue beene,

With griefe of their heart haue tasted the smart

Of that primitiue sinne.

Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD