Poems. By W.H.

Gray Haires.

WElcome gray haires, whose light I gladly trust To guide me to my peacefull bed of dust: My lifes bright Stars, whose wakefull eyes shut mine; Stand on my head as Tapers on my shrine, The worlds grand noise of nothing (which invades My soule) exclude from deaths approaching shades; But as the day is usher'd in by one And the same Star that shewes the day is done, This twilight of my head, this doubtfull sphear, My Bodys Evening, my soules Morning Star, Th' allay of white amongst the browner haires As well the birth as death of day declares; As he whom from the Hill saw the moist Tomb, Of earth, together with her pregnant womb, This mingled colour with ambiguous strife Demonstrates my decaying into life. Thus life and death compound the world; Each weed That fades revives by sowing its own seed: Matter suppos'd the whole Creation Is nothing but form and privation: No borrow'd tresses then no cheating dy Shall to false life my dying locks bely; I shall a perfect Microcosme grow When as the Alpes, I crowned am with snow. I will beleive this white the milky way Which leads unto the Court of endlesse day.

Then let my life's flame so intensely burn That all my haires may into ashes turn, Whence may arise a Phoenix to repay With Hallelujahs this Eygnean lay.