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| ‘TERENCE, this is stupid stuff: |
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| You eat your victuals fast enough; |
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| There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear, |
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| To see the rate you drink your beer. |
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| But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, |
5 |
| It gives a chap the belly-ache. |
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| The cow, the old cow, she is dead; |
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| It sleeps well, the horned head: |
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| We poor lads, ’tis our turn now |
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| To hear such tunes as killed the cow. |
10 |
| Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme |
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| Your friends to death before their time |
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| Moping melancholy mad: |
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| Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’ |
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| |
| Why, if ’tis dancing you would be, |
15 |
| There’s brisker pipes than poetry. |
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| Say, for what were hop-yards meant, |
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| Or why was Burton built on Trent? |
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| Oh many a peer of England brews |
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| Livelier liquor than the Muse, |
20 |
| And malt does more than Milton can |
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| To justify God’s ways to man. |
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| Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink |
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| For fellows whom it hurts to think: |
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| Look into the pewter pot |
25 |
| To see the world as the world’s not. |
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| And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past: |
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| The mischief is that ’twill not last. |
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| Oh I have been to Ludlow fair |
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| And left my necktie God knows where, |
30 |
| And carried half way home, or near, |
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| Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer: |
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| Then the world seemed none so bad, |
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| And I myself a sterling lad; |
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| And down in lovely muck I’ve lain, |
35 |
| Happy till I woke again. |
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| Then I saw the morning sky: |
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| Heigho, the tale was all a lie; |
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| The world, it was the old world yet, |
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| I was I, my things were wet, |
40 |
| And nothing now remained to do |
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| But begin the game anew. |
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| |
| Therefore, since the world has still |
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| Much good, but much less good than ill, |
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| And while the sun and moon endure |
45 |
| Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure, |
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| I’d face it as a wise man would, |
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| And train for ill and not for good. |
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| ’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale |
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| Is not so brisk a brew as ale: |
50 |
| Out of a stem that scored the hand |
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| I wrung it in a weary land. |
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| But take it: if the smack is sour, |
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| The better for the embittered hour; |
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| It should do good to heart and head |
55 |
| When your soul is in my soul’s stead; |
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| And I will friend you, if I may, |
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| In the dark and cloudy day. |
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| |
| There was a king reigned in the East: |
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| There, when kings will sit to feast, |
60 |
| They get their fill before they think |
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| With poisoned meat and poisoned drink. |
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| He gathered all that springs to birth |
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| From the many-venomed earth; |
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| First a little, thence to more, |
65 |
| He sampled all her killing store; |
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| And easy, smiling, seasoned sound, |
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| Sate the king when healths went round. |
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| They put arsenic in his meat |
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| And stared aghast to watch him eat; |
70 |
| They poured strychnine in his cup |
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| And shook to see him drink it up: |
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| They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt: |
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| Them it was their poison hurt. |
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| —I tell the tale that I heard told. |
75 |
| Mithridates, he died old. |
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