| |
| ‘TERENCE, this is stupid stuff: | |
| You eat your victuals fast enough; | |
| There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear, | |
| To see the rate you drink your beer. | |
| But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, | 5 |
| It gives a chap the belly-ache. | |
| The cow, the old cow, she is dead; | |
| It sleeps well, the horned head: | |
| We poor lads, ’tis our turn now | |
| To hear such tunes as killed the cow. | 10 |
| Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme | |
| Your friends to death before their time | |
| Moping melancholy mad: | |
| Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’ | |
| |
| Why, if ’tis dancing you would be, | 15 |
| There’s brisker pipes than poetry. | |
| Say, for what were hop-yards meant, | |
| Or why was Burton built on Trent? | |
| Oh many a peer of England brews | |
| Livelier liquor than the Muse, | 20 |
| And malt does more than Milton can | |
| To justify God’s ways to man. | |
| Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink | |
| For fellows whom it hurts to think: | |
| Look into the pewter pot | 25 |
| To see the world as the world’s not. | |
| And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past: | |
| The mischief is that ’twill not last. | |
| Oh I have been to Ludlow fair | |
| And left my necktie God knows where, | 30 |
| And carried half way home, or near, | |
| Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer: | |
| Then the world seemed none so bad, | |
| And I myself a sterling lad; | |
| And down in lovely muck I’ve lain, | 35 |
| Happy till I woke again. | |
| Then I saw the morning sky: | |
| Heigho, the tale was all a lie; | |
| The world, it was the old world yet, | |
| I was I, my things were wet, | 40 |
| And nothing now remained to do | |
| But begin the game anew. | |
| |
| Therefore, since the world has still | |
| Much good, but much less good than ill, | |
| And while the sun and moon endure | 45 |
| Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure, | |
| I’d face it as a wise man would, | |
| And train for ill and not for good. | |
| ’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale | |
| Is not so brisk a brew as ale: | 50 |
| Out of a stem that scored the hand | |
| I wrung it in a weary land. | |
| But take it: if the smack is sour, | |
| The better for the embittered hour; | |
| It should do good to heart and head | 55 |
| When your soul is in my soul’s stead; | |
| And I will friend you, if I may, | |
| In the dark and cloudy day. | |
| |
| There was a king reigned in the East: | |
| There, when kings will sit to feast, | 60 |
| They get their fill before they think | |
| With poisoned meat and poisoned drink. | |
| He gathered all that springs to birth | |
| From the many-venomed earth; | |
| First a little, thence to more, | 65 |
| He sampled all her killing store; | |
| And easy, smiling, seasoned sound, | |
| Sate the king when healths went round. | |
| They put arsenic in his meat | |
| And stared aghast to watch him eat; | 70 |
| They poured strychnine in his cup | |
| And shook to see him drink it up: | |
| They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt: | |
| Them it was their poison hurt. | |
| —I tell the tale that I heard told. | 75 |
| Mithridates, he died old. |
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