The pomander of prayer, newly madeThe pomaunder of prayer, newly made

I Am wonderful weary (O lord) of this life and of this careful & painful pilgrimage. This life is a wretched life, a life that will soon fade away, an uncertain life a painful life, an unclean life, a life that worthily may be called the mistress of all evils, the queen of pride, full of miseries and errors which is not worthy to be called a life, but rather a death, in the which every hour, we die by divers defects & failings of nature, by mutabilities, alterations & divers kinds of deaths. How can we therefore, call this ⟨p. 93⟩that we live in this world, a life which is puffed up and swollen often with humours, made lean and feeble with sorrows, dried with angers and hot hasty furies of the mind, the air filleth it full of diseases, metes do infect it, fasting do extenuate and make it lean, pastimes maketh it to dissolute and reckless, pensiveness doth consume and waste it, trouble and vexation doth shorten and lessen it, security and to much ease: maketh it dull and nothing lusty, riches setteth it a float and puffeth it up into pride, poverty dismayeth and discourageth it, youth doth ⟨image 95⟩extol it, age lameth it. Infirmity breaketh it, sorrow oppresseth it. And immediately after these evils as though it were by succession, cometh death, and maketh an end of all the joys of this miserable life, after such a sort that a man would not think (when he leaveth this life) to have lived at all. This living death, & dying life, although it be sprinkled and mixed with these and other so rows & miseries: yet (Oh good Lord) how many men doth it catch and entangle with her enticing snares? & how many doth she deceive with her deceitful & false promises? And for all that