Even such is time, that takes in trust

Our youth, our joys, our all we have,

And pays us but with age and dust;

Who in the dark and silent grave,

When we have wandered all our ways,

Shuts up the story of our days.

But from this earth, this grave, this dust,

My God shall raise me up, I trust!

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618): Written the night before his death.—Found in his Bible in the Gate-house at Westminster.

What in me is dark

Illumine, what is low raise and support,

That to the height of this great argument

I may assert eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 22.