Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Thomas Jordan. 1612?1685335. Coronemus nos Rosis antequam marcescant
LET us drink and be merry, dance, joke, and rejoice, | |
With claret and sherry, theorbo and voice! | |
The changeable world to our joy is unjust, | |
All treasure ‘s uncertain, | |
Then down with your dust! | 5 |
In frolics dispose your pounds, shillings, and pence, | |
For we shall be nothing a hundred years hence. | |
We’ll sport and be free with Moll, Betty, and Dolly, | |
Have oysters and lobsters to cure melancholy: | |
Fish-dinners will make a man spring like a flea, | 10 |
Dame Venus, love’s lady, | |
Was born of the sea; | |
With her and with Bacchus we’ll tickle the sense, | |
For we shall be past it a hundred years hence. | |
Your most beautiful bride who with garlands is crown’d | 15 |
And kills with each glance as she treads on the ground, | |
Whose lightness and brightness doth shine in such splendour | |
That none but the stars | |
Are thought fit to attend her, | |
Though now she be pleasant and sweet to the sense, | 20 |
Will be damnable mouldy a hundred years hence. | |
Then why should we turmoil in cares and in fears, | |
Turn all our tranquill’ty to sighs and to tears? | |
Let ‘s eat, drink, and play till the worms do corrupt us, | |
‘Tis certain, Post mortem | 25 |
Nulla voluptas. | |
For health, wealth and beauty, wit, learning and sense, | |
Must all come to nothing a hundred years hence. |