Song by Katherine Philips

Katherine Philips Song 'Tis true our life is but a long disease, Made up of reàl pain and seeming ease. You stars, who these entangled fortunes give,     O tell me why     It is so hard to die,         Yet such a task to live! If with some pleasure we our griefs betray, It costs us dearer than it can repay, For time or fortune all things so devours,     Our hopes are crossed,     Or els the object lost,         Ere we can call it ours. Commentary: When I first looked at the title of this poem, it intrigued me because the title was, " Song." Does it talk about what songs make us feel or is it simply a song in a poem. I wanted to read the poem to find out and clear all my doubts. Before reading the poem, I looked at how many stanzas this poem had. I thought that this poem was surely the shortest poem Katherine Philips ever wrote. All the other poems I have read by Katherine are medium to long. So, I thought that the shorteness of this poem had some kind of importance or significance. I read the poem in its entirety. The poem was very deep in meaning. First of all, the poem was written using old English. She says, "Tis true our life is but a long disease. Instead of saying "it is," Katherine Philips says 'tis. This says a lot about in what era the poem was written. Katherine Philips wrote all her poems in the seventeenth to eighteenth century. The first line of the poem is very thought provoking. Katherine says, "Tis true our life is but a long disease." Here, Katherine Philips is saying that on a day-to-day basis, we live with struggles and everyday we have problems to face. The day-to-day struggles that we, humans face is the long disease that Katherine Philips is talking about in her poem. Next, Katherine Philips says,"O tell me why It is so hard to die, Yet such a task to live!" At first I was a bit confused because I am used to hearing people say that it is so easy to die, but hard to live. Then I looked at it further, and since she is from a different time period, maybe she thought that it was hard to die as well as to live. When I think about it, it is hard to die. No one ever knows when our time will come, and that is what makes it so hard. For all the interesting quotes that Katherine Philips included, I thought that this poem was very thought provoking.