Gabe's submission with original spelling and form

Tymes goe by turnes
By Robert Southwell


The lopped tree in tyme may growe agayne
Most naked plants renewe both frute and flowre
The soriest wight may finde release of payne
The dryest soyle sucke in some moystning shouer.
     Tymes goe by turnes, and chaunces chaung by course
From foule to fayre from better happ to worse

The sea of fortune doth not ever floe
She drawes her favours to the lowest ebb
Her tide hath equall tymes to come and goe
Her loome doth weave the fine and coursest Webb
No joy so great but runneth to an ende
No happ so harde but may in fine amende.

Not allwayes fall of leafe nor ever springe
No endlesse night yet not eternall daye
The saddest birdes a season finde to singe
The roughest storme a calme may soone alaye.
Thus with succeding turnes god tempereth all
That man may hope to rise yet feare to fall

A Chaunce may wynne that by mischaunce was lost
The nett that houldes no greate takes little fishe
In some thinges all, in all thinges none are croste
Fewe all they neede but none have all they wishe
Unmedled joyes here to no man befall
Who least hath some who most hath never all.



Notatations from St. Robert Southwell: Collected Poems. Eds. Peter Davidson and Anne Sweeney, 2007.

These kinds of proverbial images function as vernacular equivalents for the emblems of more academically skiled readers.

1.6 happ: fortune.

1.7 flowe: rise to full tide.

1.10 Webb: cloth.

1.22 ‘Who has little has something, who has the most never has as much as they want.’ With the moral that all human life is uncertain (and that this as much consolation as cause of grief) as opposed to the certanties of heaven.