No More Learning

Come, Anthea, let us two
Go to feast, as others do.
Tarts and custards, creams and cakes,
Are the junkets still at wakes:
Unto which the tribes resort,
Where the business is the sport.
Morris-dancers thou shall see,
Marian, too, in pageantry,
And a mimic to devise
Many grinning properties.
Players there will be, and those
Base in action as in clothes;
Yet with strutting they will please
The incurious villages.
Near the dying of the day
There will be a cudgel-play,
Where a coxcomb will be broke
Ere a good word can be spoke:
But the anger ends all here,
Drenched in ale, or drown'd in beer.
Happy rustics! best content
With the cheapest merriment,
And possess no other fear
Than to want the wake next year.

_Marian_, Maid Marian of the Robin Hood ballads.
_Action_, _i. e. _, dramatic action.
_Incurious_, careless, easily pleased.
_Coxcomb_, to cause blood to flow from the opponent's head was the
test of victory.


762. THE PETER-PENNY.
Fresh strewings allow
To my sepulchre now,
To make my lodging the sweeter;
A staff or a wand
Put then in my hand,
With a penny to pay S. Peter.

Who has not a cross
Must sit with the loss,
And no whit further must venture;
Since the porter he
Will paid have his fee,
Or else not one there must enter.

Who at a dead lift
Can't send for a gift
A pig to the priest for a roaster,
Shall hear his clerk say,
By yea and by nay,
_No penny, no paternoster_.

_S. Peter_, as the gate-ward of heaven.
_Cross_, a coin.


763. TO DOCTOR ALABASTER.

Nor art thou less esteem'd that I have plac'd,
Amongst mine honour'd, thee almost the last:
In great processions many lead the way
To him who is the triumph of the day,
As these have done to thee who art the one,
One only glory of a million:
In whom the spirit of the gods does dwell,
Firing thy soul, by which thou dost foretell
When this or that vast dynasty must fall
Down to a fillet more imperial;
When this or that horn shall be broke, and when
Others shall spring up in their place again;
When times and seasons and all years must lie
Drowned in the sea of wild eternity;
When the black doomsday books, as yet unseal'd,
Shall by the mighty angel be reveal'd;
And when the trumpet which thou late hast found
Shall call to judgment. Tell us when the sound
Of this or that great April day shall be,
And next the Gospel we will credit thee.
Meantime like earth-worms we will crawl below,
And wonder at those things that thou dost know.

For an account of Alabaster see Notes: the allusions here are to his
apocalyptic writings.
_Horn_, used as a symbol of prosperity.
_The trumpet which thou late hast found_, _i. e.