| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. | | | | No Medicine to Mirth | | By Francis Beaumont (1584–1616) |
| | | ’TIS 1 mirth that fills the veins with blood, | |
| More than wine, or sleep, or food; | |
| Let each man keep his heart at ease; | |
| No man dies of that disease. | |
| He that would his body keep | 5 |
| From diseases, must not weep; | |
| But whoever laughs and sings, | |
| Never he his body brings | |
| Into fevers, gouts, or rheums, | |
| Or lingeringly his lungs consumes; | 10 |
| Or meets with aches in his bone, | |
| Or catarrhs, or griping stone: | |
| But contented lives for aye; | |
| The more he laughs, the more he may. | |
| | | Note 1. From The Knight of the Burning Pestle, 1611, act ii. sc. 1. [back] | | |
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