No More Learning

Burn, or drown me, choose ye whether,
So I may but die together;
Thus to slay me by degrees
Is the height of cruelties.
What needs twenty stabs, when one
Strikes me dead as any stone?
O show mercy then, and be
Kind at once to murder me.


758. PRINCES AND FAVOURITES.

Princes and fav'rites are most dear, while they
By giving and receiving hold the play;
But the relation then of both grows poor,
When these can ask, and kings can give no more.


759. EXAMPLES; OR, LIKE PRINCE, LIKE PEOPLE.

Examples lead us, and we likely see;
Such as the prince is, will his people be.


760. POTENTATES.

Love and the Graces evermore do wait
Upon the man that is a potentate.


761. THE WAKE.

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.