Sic Vita
By Henry King (1592 - 1669)
An Anglican bishop, King is more well known for his friendships than his poetry. He maintained serious correspondence with both Ben Johnson and John Donne, to the point where Donne named him the executor of his will. Nonetheless, Sic Vita and The Exequy, his most famous poem, rival any of Donne’s or Johnson’s work.
Sic Vita
Like to the falling of a star,
Or as the flights of eagles are,
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew,
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood:
Even such is man, whose borrowed light
Is straight called in, and paid to night.
The wind blows out, the bubble dies;
The spring entombed in autumn lies;
The dew dries up, the star is shot;
The flight is past, and man forgot.
There is a simple, easy message that poems like this often try to offer, and I absolutely love that this one really stays away from it. It is a saccharine but maybe ultimately hollow message that life is beautiful just because it is so short. Like the dew, or the wind, or the bubbles on the water, it’s beauty comes from its transience. It’s a message that says we should be grateful that life is short, for it makes it so much sweeter. I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to hear that at a funeral. I’m generally of the opinion that if a thing is well and truly good, more of it would be better. I would like more spring before we get into summer. I would like to see the eagle soar for more than a moment. Beauty doesn’t come solely from endings.
Some beautiful things are solid. They are long lasting, perhaps even eternal. And some aren’t. Such is life. That’s what “Sic Vita” literally translates to. Such is life. This isn’t a poem that tries to paper over the fact that life hard sometimes. Our light is “borrowed” after all. But it also isn’t a poem that even for a moment allows you to be depressed over that fact. Man may eventually be “forgot” but what a wonderful list of things to be compared too before that happens. “Falling” we may be, but we are a “star” which is to say we are of heaven. Other religious poets in his era preferred to compare man to worms rather than eagles.
I hope to be more like this poem when I grow up. I never want to deny the hard truths of this world. But I also never want to lose sight for how beautiful it is. Such is life.