From SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT'S LADIES IN ARMS. LET us live, live! for, being dead, The pretty spots, Ribbons and knots, And the fine French dress for the head, In the cold, cold bed of honour. Beat down our grottos, and hew down our bowers, So exact in each station, Are now out of fashion. Hence with our needles, and give us your spades; We, that were ladies, grow coarse as our maids. Our coaches have driven us to balls at the court, We now must drive barrows to earth up the fort. CURSED JEALOUSY. HIS cursed jealousy, what is't? THIS 'Tis love that has lost itself in a mist; 'Tis love being frighted out of his wits; 'Tis love that has a fever got; Love that is violently hot, But troubled with cold and trembling fits. 'Tis yet a more unnatural evil: Tis the god of love, 'tis the god of love, possessed with a devil. 1 Embroidered borders of lace. 'Tis rich corrupted wine of love, Which sharpest vinegar does prove; From all the sweet flowers which might honey make, It does a deadly poison bring: Strange serpent which itself doth sting! It never can sleep, and dreams still awake; It stuffs up the marriage-bed with thorns. It gores itself, it gores itself, with imagined horns. From SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT'S The Man's the Master, 1669. DRINK, DRINK, DRINK! THE bread is all baked, The embers are raked; 'Tis midnight now by chanticleer's first crowing; Let's kindly carouse Whilst 'top of the house The cats fall out in the heat of their wooing. Stay, stay, the nurse is waked, the child does cry, The cradle's rocked, the child is hushed again, This clashing does but show That, as in music, so in love must be Some discord to make up a harmony. Sing, sing! When crickets sing why should not we? Q The crickets were merry before us; They sung us thanks ere we made them a fire. The chimney's their church, the oven their quire. Whom Will-of-the-wisp bewitches: Let 'em ring, Let 'em sing, Whilst we spend the night in love and in laughter. When night is gone, O then too soon The discords and cares of the day come after. Come, boys! a health, a health, a double health Before it be day, 'Twill quickly grow early when it is late: A health to thee, To him, to me, To all who beauty love, and business hate! From SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT'S WAKE ALL THE DEAD! WHAT HO! WHAT HO! WAKE all the dead! what ho! what ho! How soundly they sleep whose pillows lie low? Through wickets or through panes of glass; The state is now love's foe, love's foe; But, O sad chance, his judge was old; Hearts cruel grow, when blood grows cold. No man being young his process would draw. O heavens, that love should be subject to law! Lovers go woo the dead, the dead! Lie two in a grave, and to bed, to bed! From SIR WILLIAM BERKLEY'S The Lost Lady, 1639. WHERE DID YOU BORROW THAT LAST SIGH? WHERE did you borrow that last sigh, WHERE And that relenting groan? For those that sigh, and not for love, Usurp what's not their own. Love's arrows sooner armour pierce Than your soft snowy skin; From JASPER MAYNE'S The TIME is the feathered thing, And, whilst I praise The sparklings of thy looks and call them rays, Leaving behind him as he flies An unperceived dimness in thine eyes. Do make us old; And every sand of his fleet glass, Whilst we do speak, our fire |