And while the dull miser esteems himself wiser, His bags to increase, while his health does decay; Our souls we enlighten, our fancies we brighten, And pass the long evenings in pleasure away. All cheerful and hearty, we set aside party, With some tender fair the bright bumper is crown'd; Thus Bacchus invites us, and Venus delights us, While care in an ocean of claret is drown'd: See, here's our physician, we know no ambition, But where there's good wine and good company found; Thus happy together, in spite of all weather, "Tis sunshine and summer with us the year round. SONG XV. FROM ANACREON. IF gold could lengthen life, I swear, But since life is not to be bought, With vain complaints, or fruitless cries? Have all decreed it shall be so, What good will gold or crying do? Give me, to ease my thirsty soul, That once I had the world my slave. SONG XVI. AN HUNDRED YEARS HENCE. LET us drink and be merry, Dance, joke, and rejoice, With claret and sherry, Theorbo and voice : The changeable world To our joy is unjust; All treasure's uncertain, Then down with your dust. In frolics dispose Your pounds, shillings, and pence; For we shall be nothing An hundred years hence. We'll kiss and be free With Moll, Betty, and Nelly, Have oysters and lobsters A lass spring like a flea; With Bacchus and her An hundred years hence. Your most beautiful bit, That hath all eyes upon her, That her honesty sells For a haut-goût of honour, Are thought fit to attend her; The usurer, 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'er see, The year one thousand Eight hundred and three : His wit and his wealth, His learning and sense, Shall be turned to nothing An hundred years hence. Your Chancery-lawyers, " In spinning out suits To the length of three lives Do wear out in slavery, In the present tense, An hundred years hence. Then why should we turmoil To sighs and to tears? Let's eat, drink, and play, Till the worms do corrupt us, 'Tis certain, post mortem Nulla voluptas. Let's deal with our damsels, That we may from thence, Have broods to succeed us An hundred years hence. SONG XVII. JOLLY mortals, fill your glasses, Scorn the nymph and all her graces, VOL. II. 0. Look within the bowl that's flowing, Alexander hated thinking, Drank about at council-board; SONG XVIII. As swift as time put round the glass, Or, if the sun again should rise, Death, ere the morn, may close your eyes; Come, fill a bumper, fill it round; Let mirth, and wit, and wine abound; For, to be merry's to be wise. [This passage, like too many others amid the present festal assemblage, betrays a near alliance with the modern philosophy of the Gallic school; which Miss More has forcibly and felicitously termed 'the college of infidelity.'] |