Charles Cotton (1630–1687)

THE DAY is set did earth adorn

To drink the brewing of the main,

And, hot with travel, will ere morn

Carouse it to an ebb again.

Then let us drink, time to improve,

Secure of Cromwell and his spies;

Night will conceal our healths, and love,

For all her thousand thousand eyes.

Chorus:Then let us drink, secure of spies,

To Phœbus, and his second rise.

Without the evening dew and showers,

The earth would be a barren place,

Of trees and plants, of herbs and flowers,

To crown her now enamelled face;

Nor can wit spring, nor fancies grow,

Unless we dew our heads in wine,

Plump autumn’s wealthy overflow,

And sprightly issue of the vine.

Chorus:Then let us drink, secure of spies,

To Phœbus, and his second rise.

Wine is the cure of cares and sloth,

That rust the metal of the mind;

The juice that man to man does, both

In freedom and in friendship bind.

This clears the monarch’s cloudy brows,

And cheers the hearts of sullen swains,

To wearied souls repose allows,

And makes slaves caper in their chains.

Chorus:Then let us drink, secure of spies,

To Phœbus, and his second rise.

Wine, that distributes to each part

Its heat and motion, is the spring,

The poet’s head, the subject’s heart;—

’Twas wine made old Anacreon sing.

Then let us quaff it, whilst the night

Serves but to hide such guilty souls

As fly the beauty of the light;

Or dare not pledge our loyal bowls.

Chorus:Then let us revel, quaff, and sing

Health, and his sceptre to the King.