English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 246. Let Us Drink and Be Merry |
| | | Thomas Jordan (1612(?)–1685) |
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| 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! | 5 |
| In frolics dispose your pounds, shillings, and pence, | |
| For we shall be nothing a hundred years hence. | |
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| We’ll sport and be free with Moll, Betty, and Dolly, | |
| Have oysters and lobsters to cure melancholy: | |
| Fish-dinners will make a man spring like a flea, | 10 |
| Dame Venus, love’s lady, | |
| Was born of the sea: | |
| With her and with Bacchus we’ll tickle the sense, | |
| For we shall be past it a hundred years hence. | |
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| Your most beautiful bride who with garlands is crown’d | 15 |
| And kills with each glance as she treads on the ground. | |
| Whose lightness and brightness doth shine in such splendour | |
| That one but the stars | |
| Are thought fit to attend her, | |
| Though now she be pleasant and sweet to the sense, | 20 |
| Will be damnable mouldy a hundred years hence. | |
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| Then why should we turmoil in cares and in fears, | |
| Turn all our tranquill’ty to sighs and to tears? | |
| Let’s eat, drink, and play till the worms do corrupt us, | |
| ’Tis certain, Post mortem | 25 |
| Nulla voluptas. | |
| For health, wealth and beauty, wit, learning and sense, | |
| Must all come to nothing a hundred years hence. | |
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