Well, rest her bones! quoth I, she’s gone;
But must I therefore lie alone?
What! am I to her memory tied?
Must I not live, because she died? 250
And thus I logically said
(’Tis good to have a reasoning head!)
is this my wife? Probatur, not;
For death dissolv’d the marriage-knot;
She was, concedo, during life;
But, is a piece of clay a wife?
Again; if not a wife, d’ye see,
Why then no kin at all to me:
And he, who general tears can shed
For folks that happen to be dead, 260
May e’en with equal justice mourn
For those who never yet were born.
T. Those points indeed you quaintly prove:
But logic is no friend to love.
S. My children then were just pen-feather’d:
Some little corn for them I gather’d,
And sent them to my spouse’s mother;
So left that brood, to get another:
And, as old Harry whilom said,
Reflecting on Anne Boleyn dead, 270
Cocksbones! I now again do stand
The jolliest bachelor i’ th’ land.
T. Ah me! my joys, my hopes, are fled;
My first, my only love, is dead:
With endless grief let me bemoan
Columbo’s loss! —
S. — Let me go on.
As yet my fortune was but narrow,
I woo’d my cousin Philly Sparrow,
O’ th’ elder house of Chirping End, 280
From whence the younger branch descend.
Well seated in a field of pease
She liv’d, extremely at her ease:
But, when the honey-moon was past,
The following nights were soon o’ercast;
She kept her own, could plead the law,
And quarrel for a barley-straw:
Both, you may judge, became less kind,
As more we knew each other’s mind;
She soon grew sullen; I hard-hearted; 290
We scolded, hated, fought, and parted.
To London, blessed town! I went;
She boarded at a farm in Kent.
A magpie from the country fled,
And kindly told me she was dead:
I prun’d my feathers, cock’d my tail,
And set my heart again to sale.
My fourth, a mere coquette, or such
I thought her; nor avails it much,
If true or false; our troubles spring 300
More from the fancy than the thing.
Two staring horns, I often said,
But ill became a sparrow’s head;
But then, to set that balance even,
Your cuckold sparrow goes to Heaven.
The thing you fear, suppose it done,
If you inquire, you make it known.
Whilst at the root your horns are sore,
The more you scratch, they ache the more.
But turn the tables, and reflect, 310
All may not be, that you suspect:
By the mind’s eye, the horns we mean
Are only in ideas seen;
’Tis from the inside of the head
Their branches shoot, their antlers spread;
Fruitful suspicions often bear ’em,
You feel them from the time you fear ’em.
Cuckoo! cuckoo! that echoed word
Offends the ear of vulgar bird;
But those of finer taste have found, 320
There’s nothing in’t beside the sound;
Preferment always waits on horns,
And household peace the gift adorns;
This way, or that, let factions tend,
The spark is still the cuckold’s friend;
This way, or that, let madam roam,
Well pleas’d and quiet she comes home.
Now weigh the pleasure with the pain,
The plus and minus, loss and gain,
And what La Fontaine laughing says, 330
Is serious truth, in such a case;
“Who slights the evil, finds it least;
And who does nothing, does the best.”
I never strove to rule the roast,
She ne’er refus’d to pledge my toast:
In visits if we chanc’d to meet,
I seem’d obliging, she discreet;
We neither much caress’d nor strove,
But good dissembling pass’d for love.
T. Whate’er of light our eye may know, 340
’Tis only light itself can show:
Whate’er of love our heart can feel,
’Tis mutual love alone can tell.
S. My pretty, amorous, foolish bird,
A moment’s patience! in one word,
The three kind sisters broke the chain,
She died, I mourn’d, and woo’d again.
T. Let me with juster grief deplore
My dear Columbo, now no more;
Let me with constant tears bewail — 350
S. Your sorrow does but spoil my tale.
My fifth, she prov’d a jealous wife,
Lord shield us all from such a life;
“Twas doubt, complaint, reply, chitchat,
“Twas this, to-day; to-morrow, that.
Sometimes, forsooth, upon the brook
I kept a miss; an honest rook
Told it a snipe, who told a steer,
Who told it those who told it her.
One day a linnet and a lark 360
Had met me strolling in the dark;
The next a woodcock and an owl,
Quick-sighted, grave, and sober fowl,
Would on their corporal oath allege,
I kiss’d a hen behind the hedge.
Well; madam turtle, to be brief,
(Repeating but renews our grief)
As once she watch’d me from a rail,
(Poor soul!) her footing chanc’d to fail,
And down she fell, and broke her hip; 370
The fever came, and then the pip:
Death did the only cure apply:
She was at quiet, so was I.
T. Could love unmov’d these changes view?
His sorrows, as his joys, are true.
S. My dearest dove, one wise man says,
Alluding to our present case,
“We’re here to-day and gone to-morrow:”
Then what avails superfluous sorrow!
Another, full as wise as he, 380
Adds; that “a married man may see
Two happy hours;” and which are they
The first and last, perhaps you’ll say.
’Tis true, when blithe she goes to bed
And when she peaceably lies dead;
“Women ‘twixt sheets are best, ’tis said,
Be they of holland, or of lead.”
Now, cur’d of Hymen’s hopes and fears,
And sliding down the vale of years,
I hoped to fix my future rest, 390
And took a widow to my nest,
(Ah, turtle! had she been like thee,
Sober, yet gentle; wise, yet free!)
But she was peevish, noisy, bold,
A witch ingrafted on a scold.
Jove in Pandora’s box confin’d
A hundred ills, to vex mankind:
To vex one bird, in her bandore,
He had at least a hundred more.
And, soon as time that veil withdrew, 400
The plagues o’er all the parish flew;
Her stock of borrow’d tears grew dry,
And native tempests arm’d her eye;
Black clouds around her forehead hung,
And thunder rattled on her tongue.
We, young or old, or cock or hen,
All liv’d in Æolus’s den;
The nearest her, the more accurst,
Ill far’d he
r friends, her husband worst.
But Jove amidst his anger spares, 410
Remarks our faults, but hears our prayers.
In short, she died. Why then she’s dead,
Quoth I, and once again I’ll wed.
Would heaven, this mourning year were past!
One may have better luck at last.
Matters at worst are sure to mend,
The devil’s wife was but a fiend.
T. Thy tale has rais’d a turtle’s spleen,
Uxorious inmate! bird obscene I
Dar’st thou defile these sacred groves, 420
These silent seats of faithful loves?
Begone, with flagging wings sit down
On some old penthouse near the town;
In brewers’ stables peck thy grain,
Then wash it down with puddled rain;
And hear thy dirty offspring squall
From bottles on a suburb wall.
Where thou hast been, return again,
Vile bird! thou hast convers’d with men;
Notions like these from men are given, 430
Those vilest creatures under Heaven.
To cities and to courts repair,
Flattery and falsehood flourish there;
There all thy wretched arts employ,
Where riches triumph over joy;
Where passion does with interest barter,
And Hymen holds by Mammon’s charter;
Where truth by point of law is parried,
And knaves and prudes are six times married.
APPLICATION OF THE ABOVE; WRITTEN LONG AFTER THE TALE.
DEAREST daughter, of two dearest
To thee my muse this little tale commends.
Loving and lov’d, regard thy future mate,
Long love his person, though deplore his fate;
Seem young when old in thy dear husband’s arms,
For constant virtue has immortal charms.
And, when I lie low sepulchred in earth,
And the glad year returns thy day of birth,
Vouchsafe to say, “Ere I could write or spell,
The bard, who from my cradle wish’d me well, 10
Told me I should the prating Sparrow blame,
And bad me imitate the Turtle’s flame.”
DOWN-HALL: A BALLAD, TO THE TUNE OF KING JOHN AND THE ABBOT OF CANTERBURY, 1715.
I SING not old Jason, who travell’d through Greece,
To kiss the fair maids, and possess the rich Fleece;
Nor sing! Æneas, who, led by his mother,
Got rid of one wife, and went far for another.
Derry down, down, hey deny down.
Nor him who through Asia and Europe did roam,
Ulysses by name, who ne’er cried to go home,
But rather desir’d to see cities and men,
Than return to his farms, and converse with old Pen.
Hang Homer and Virgil! their meaning to seek, 10
A man must have pok’d into Latin and Greek;
Those who love their own tongue, we have reason to hope,
Have read them translated by Dryden and Pope.
But I sing of exploits that have lately been done
By two British heroes, called Matthew and John:
And how they rid friendly from fine London town,
Fair Essex to see, and a place they call Down.
Now ere they went out you may rightly suppose
How much they discours’d both in prudence and prose;
For, before this great journey was throughly concerted, 20
Full often they met, and as often they parted.
And thus Matthew said, Look you here, my friend John,
I fairly have travell’d years thirty and one;
And, though I still carried my sovereign’s warrants,
I only have gone upon other folks’ errands.
And now in this journey of life I would have
A place where to bait, ‘twixt the court and the grave:
Where joyful to live, not unwilling to die —
Gadzooks! I have just such a place in my eye.
There are gardens so stately, and arbours so thick,
A portal of stone, and a fabric of brick: 31
The matter next week shall be all in your power;
But the money, gadzooks! must be paid in an hour.
For things in this world must by law be made certain:
We both must repair unto Oliver Martin;
For he is a lawyer of worthy renown,
I’ll bring you to see, he must fix you at Down.
Quoth Matthew, I know, that, from Berwick to Dover,
You’ve sold all our premises over and over:
And now, if your buyers and sellers agree, 40
You may throw all our acres into the South Sea.
But a word to the purpose: to-morrow, dear friend,
Well see, what to-night you so highly commend;
And, if with a garden and house I am blest,
Let the Devil and Coningsby go with the rest.
Then answer’d Squire Morley; Pray get a calash,
That in summer may burn, and in winter may splash;
I love dirt and dust; and ’tis always my pleasure,
To take with me much of the soil that I measure.
But Matthew thought better: for Matthew thought right, 50
And hired a chariot so trim and so tight,
That extremes both of winter and summer might pass:
For one window was canvas, the other was glass.
Draw up, quoth friend Matthew; pull down, quoth friend John,
We shall be both hotter and colder anon.
Thus talking and scolding, they forward did speed;
And Ralpho pac’d by, under Newman the Swede.
Into an old inn did this equipage roll,
At a town they call Hodson, the sign of the Bull,
Near a nymph with an urn, that divides the highway, 60
And into a puddle throws mother of tea.
Come here, my sweet landlady, pray how d’ye do?
Where is Cicely so cleanly, and Prudence, and Sue?
And where is the widow that dwelt here below?
And the ostler that sung about eight years ago?
And where is your sister, so mild and so dear?
Whose voice to her maids like a trumpet was dear.
By my troth! she replies, you grow younger, I think:
And pray, Sir, what wine does the gentleman drink?
Why now let me die, Sir, or live upon trust, 70
If I know to which question to answer you first:
Why things, since I saw you, most strangely have varied,
The ostler is hang’d, and the widow is married.
And Prue left a child for the parish to nurse;
And Cicely went off with a gentleman’s purse;
And as to my sister, so mild and so dear,
She has lain in the churchyard full many a year
Well, peace to her ashes! what signifies grief?
She roasted red veal, and she powder’d lean beef:
Full nicely she knew to cook up a fine dish; 80
For tough were her pullets, and tender her fish.
For that matter, Sir, be you squire, knight, or lord,
I’ll give you Whate’er a good inn can afford:
I should look on myself as unhappily sped,
Did I yield to a sister, or living, or dead.
Of mutton a delicate neck and a breast
Shall swim in the water in which they were drest;
And, because you great folks are with rarities taken,
Addlereggs shall be next course, toss’d up with rank bacon.
Then supper was serv’d, and the sheets they were laid;
And Morley most lovingly whisper’d the maid. 90
The maid! was she handsome? why truly so-so.
But what Morley whisper’d we never shall know.
Then up rose these heroes as brisk as the sun,
And their horses, like his, were prepared to run.
Now when in the morning Matt ask’d for the score,
John kindly had paid it the evening before.
Their breakfast so warm to be sure they did eat,
A custom in travellers mighty discreet;
And thus with great friendship and glee they went on, 100
To find out the place you shall hear of anon,
Call’d Down, down, hey derry down.
But what did they talk of from morning till noon?
Why, of spots on the sun, and the man in the moon;
Of the Czar’s gentle temper, the stocks in the city,
The wise men of Greece, and the Secret Committee.
So to Harlow they came; and, hey! where are you all?
Show us into the parlour, and mind when I call;
Why, your maids have no motion, your men have no life;
Well, master, I hear you have buried your wife.
Come this very instant, take care to provide 111
Tea, sugar, and toast, and a horse and a guide.
Are the Harrisons here, both the old and the young?
And where stands fair Down, the delight of my song?
O squire, to the grief of my heart I may say,
I have buried two wives since you travell’d this way;
And the Harrisons both may be presently here;
And Down stands, I think, where it stood the last year.
Then Joan brought the tea-pot, and Caleb the toast;
And the wine was froth’d out by the hand of mine host; — 120
But we clear’d our extempore banquet so fast,
That the Harrisons both were forgot in the haste.
Now hey for Down-Hall! for the guide he was got;
The chariot was mounted; the horses did trot;
The guide he did bring us a dozen miles round;
But oh! all in vain: for no Down could be found.
O thou popish guide, thou hast led us astray,
Says he, How the devil should I know the way?
I never yet travell’d this road in my life;
But Down lies on the left, I was told by my wife.
Thy wife, answer’d Matthew, when she went abroad, 131
Ne’er told thee of half the by-ways she had trod:
Perhaps she met friends, and brought pence to thy house,
Complete Works of Matthew Prior Page 41