Or strong, or weak, ’tis apt to stand or fall: 
  Yet is the likeliest Building sometimes known
  To fall by obvious chances; overthrown
  Oft times by tempests, by the full mouth’d blasts
  Of Heaven; sometimes by fire; sometimes it wafts
  Through unadvis’d neglect:  put case the stuff
  Were ruin-proof, by nature strong enough
  To conquer time, and age; put case it should
  Nere know an end, alas, our Leases would;
  What hast thou then, proud flesh and blood, to boast
  Thy daies are evil, at best; but few, at most;
  But sad, at merriest; and but weak, at strongest;
  Unsure, at surest; and but short, at longest.

He afterwards went over into Ireland, where he became Secretary to the Reverend James Usher, Arch-bishop of Armagh:  one suitable to his disposition, having a Genius byassed to Devotion; Here at leisure times did he exercise himself in those ravishing delights of Poetry, but (alwaies with the Psalmist) his heart was inditing a good matter; these in time produced those excellent works of his, viz. his Histories of Jonas, Esther, Job, and Sampson; his Sions Songs and Sions Elegies, also his Euchyridion, all of them of such a heavenly strain, as if he had drank of Jordan instead of Helicon, and slept on Mount Olivet for his Pernassus.  He had also other excursions into the delightful walks of Poetry, namely, his Argulus and Parthenia, a Science (as he himself saith) taken out of Sir Philip Sidney’s Orchard, likewise his Epigrams, Shepherds Oracles, Elegies on several persons, his Hierogliphicks, but especially his Emblems, wherein he hath Out-Alciated Alcialus himself.  There hath been also acted a Comedy of his called, The Virgin Widdow, which passed with no ordinary applause.  But afterwards the Rebellion breaking forth in Ireland (where his losses were very great) he was forced to come over; and being a true Loyalist to his Soveraign, was again plundred of his Estate here, but what he took most to heart (for as for his other losses he practiced the patience of Job he had described) was his being plundred of his Books, and some rare Manuscripts which he intended for the Press, the loss of which, as it is thought, facilitated his death, which happned about the year of our Lord, 1643. to whose memory one dedicated these lines by way of Epitaph.

  To them that understand themselves so well,
  As what, and who lies here, to ask, I’ll tell,
  What I conceive Envy dare not deny,
  Far both from falshood, and from flattery.