The Desire for Rest in Death

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¶ Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?

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Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck?

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For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,

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With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves;

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Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver:

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Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light.

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There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.

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There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor.

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The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.