From The Church Porch in George Herbert’s The Temple
When thou dost purpose ought, (within thy power)
Be sure to doe it, though it be but small:
Constancie knits the bones, and makes us stowre,
When wanton pleasures becken us to thrall.
Who breaks his own bond, forfeiteth himself:
What nature made a ship, he makes a shelf.
stowre – Hutchinson glosses this as ‘stalwart, unbending’ noting it as a dialectal adjective (stour in OED) already grown so obscure by the 1674 printing that it began to be emended.
shelf – in the secondary sense, defined by the OED as ‘A sandbank in the sea or river rendering the water shallow and dangerous. Also loosely applied to a submerged ledge of rock.’
Extracts 