Webster. "Hark, now everything is still" from "The Duchess of Malfi" (? before 1614)

Excerpt from

The Duchess of Malfi

By John Webster

[Hearke, now every thing is still]

HEARKE, now every thing is still—
The Screech-Owle, and the whistler shrill,
Call upon our Dame, aloud,
And bid her quickly don her shrowd :
Much you had of Land and rent,
Your length in clay's now competent.
A long war disturb'd your minde,
Here your perfect peace is sign'd—
Of what is 't fooles make such vaine keeping ?
Sin their conception, their birth, weeping :
Their life, a generall mist of error,
Their death, a hideous storme of terror—
Strew your haire, with powders sweete :
Don clean linnen, bathe your feete,
And (the foule fiend more to checke)
A crucifixe let blesse your necke,
'Tis now full tide, 'tweene night, and day,
End your groane, and come away.

Source:
The Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse.
H. J. C. Grierson and G. Bullough, eds.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934. 204.