Nativity. Poems. John Donne

      For, before God had made up all the rest,

      Corruption ent’red, and deprav’d the best;

      It seiz’d the angels, and then first of all

      The world did in her cradle take a fall,

      And turn’d her brains, and took a general maim,

      Wronging each joint of th’universal frame.

      The noblest part, man, felt it first; and then

      Both beasts and plants, curs’d in the curse of man.

      So did the world from the first hour decay,

      That evening was beginning of the day,

      And now the springs and summers which we see,

      Like sons of women after fifty be.