Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. I. Early Poetry: Chaucer to Donne

Joseph Hall (1574–1656)

A Coxcomb

[From Book iii. Sat. 5.]

LATE travelling along in London way

Me met, as seen by his disguised array,

A lusty courtier, whose curled head

With abron locks was fairly furnished.

I him saluted in our lavish wise;

He answers my untimely courtesies:

His bonnet vailed, ere ever he could think

The unruly wind blows off his periwinke.

He lights and runs and quickly hath him sped

To overtake his overrunning head.

The sportful wind, to mock the headless man,

Tosses apace his pitched Rogerian:

And straight it to a deeper ditch hath blown;

There must my yonker fetch his waxen crown.

I looked and laughed, whiles in his raging mind

He cursed all courtesy and unruly wind.

I looked and laughed, and much I marvelled

To see so large a causeway on his head,

And me bethought, that when it first begon

’Twas some shrewd autumn that so bared the bone.

Is ’t not sweet pride, when men their crowns must shade

With that which jerks the hams of every jade,

Or floor-strewed locks from off the Barber’s shears?

But waxen crowns well ’gree with borrowed hairs.