The Careless Gallant, Or, A Farewel to Sorrow.
Whether these Lines do please, or give offence,
Or shall be damn'd as neither wit nor sence;
The Poet is, for that, in no suspence,
For ie is all one a hundred years hence.
To an Excellent, and delightful Tune.
|
LEt us sing and merry, dance, joke and rejoyce,
|
With Claret and Sherry, Theorbo and voice,
|
The changeable world to our joy is unjust,
|
All treasures uncertain,
|
Then down with your dust:
|
In frolicks dispose your pounds, shillings, and pence
|
For we shall be nothing a hundred years hence.
|
We'l sport and be free, with Frank, Betty, and Dolly
|
Have Losters and Oysters to cure melancholly,
|
Fish-dinners will make a man Spring like a Flea,
|
Dame Venus, loves Lady
|
was born of the Sea:
|
With her and with Bacchus we'l tickle the sence,
|
For we shall be past it a hundred years hence,
|
Your beautiful bit, who hath all eyes upon her,
|
That her honesty sells for a hog go of honour,
|
Whose lightness and brightness doth cast such a splender
|
That none art thought fit,
|
But the Stars to attend her;
|
Though now she seems pleasant, & sweet to the sence
|
Will be damnable mouldy a hundred years hence,
|
Your greatest Grand-Seignior who rants it in riot,
|
Nor suffering his poor Christian neigbours live quiet,
|
Whose numberless army to him belongs,
|
Consists of more Nations,
|
Than Bable hath tongues:
|
Though numerous as dust, yet in spight of defence,
|
Shall all lie in ashes a hundred years hence.
|
Your Userer that in the hundred takes twenty.
|
Who wants in his wealth, and pines in his plenty,
|
Lays up for a season which he shall ne'r see,
|
The year one thousand,
|
Eight hundred and three;
|
Shall have chang'd all his Baggs his houses & Rents
|
For a worm-eaten Coffin a hundred years hence.
|
Your Chancery-Lawyer, who by conscience thrives
|
In spinning a sute to the length of three lives,
|
A sute which the Clyent doth wear out in slavery,
|
whilst pleader makes conscience
|
a cloak for his Knavery:
|
Can boast of his cunning but i'th present-Tence,
|
For Non est inventus a hundred years hence.
|
Then why should we Turmoyl in cares and fears,
|
And turn our tranquillity to sighs and tears,
|
Let's eat drink, & play, e're the worms do corrupt us
|
For I say, that
|
Post mortem nulla voluptas:
|
let's deal with our damsels that we may from thence
|
Have broods to suceed us a hundred years hence.
|
I never could gain satisfaction upon,
|
Your dreams of a bliss when we'r cold as a stone,
|
The Sages, call us Drunkards, Glutons, & wenchers
|
But we find such Morsels,
|
upon their own Trenchers:
|
For Abigal, Hannah and sister Prudence,
|
Will simper to nothing a hundred years hence.
|
The Plush-coated Quack that his fees to enlarge,
|
Kills people with Licence, and at ther own charge,
|
Who builds a vast structure of ill gotten wealth,
|
from the degrees of a Piss-pot,
|
and ruines of health:
|
Though treasures of life he pretends to dispence.
|
Shall be turned into mumy a hundred years hence
|
The Buterflye Courtier that Peagant of state,
|
The Mouse-trap of honour and Maygame of fate,
|
With all his ambitions, intrigues, and his tricks,
|
must dye like a Clown,
|
and then drop into Stix;
|
His plots against death, art too slender a fence,
|
For he'l be out of fashion a hundred years hence.
|
Yea the Poet himself that so loftily sings,
|
As he scorns any subjects, but Hero's or Kings,
|
Must to the Caprico's of fortune submit,
|
and often be counted
|
a fool for his wit,
|
Thus beauty, wit, wealth, law learning, and sence
|
All come to nothing a hundred years hence.
|
|
|
|
|
|