Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. II. The Seventeenth Century: Ben Jonson to Dryden

Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

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 shalt 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,

Drench’d 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.