The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (24 page)

THE SONG

Adieu, farewell earth's bliss,
This world uncertain is,
Fond are life's lustful joys,
Death proves them all but toys,
None from his darts can fly;
I am sick, I must die:
         Lord, have mercy on us.

Rich men, trust not in wealth,
Gold cannot buy you health;
Physick himself must fade.
All things to end are made,
The plague full swift goes by;
I am sick, I must die:
         Lord, have mercy on us.

Beauty is but a flower,
Which wrinkles will devour,
Brightness falls from the air,
¹⁷⁷
Queens have died young and fair,
Dust hath closed Helen's eye.
I am sick, I must die:
         Lord, have mercy on us.

Strength stoops unto the grave,
Worms feed on Hector brave,
Swords may not fight with fate,
Earth still holds ope her gate.
Come, come, the bells do cry.
I am sick, I must die:
         Lord, have mercy on us.

Wit with his wantonness,
Tasteth death's bitterness:
Hell's executioner
Hath no ears for to hear
What vain art can reply.
I am sick, I must die:
         Lord, have mercy on us.

Haste therefore each degree,
To welcome destiny:
Heaven is our heritage,
Earth but a player's stage,
Mount we unto the sky.
I am sick, I must die:
         Lord, have mercy on us.

SUMMER
: Beshrew me, but thy song hath moved me.

WILL SUMMERS
: Lord, have mercy on us. How lamentable ‘tis!

[
Enter Vertumnus with Christmas and Backwinter
.]

VERTUMNUS
: I have dispatched, my Lord. I have brought you them you sent me for.

WILL SUMMERS
: What say'st thou? Hast thou made a good batch?
¹⁷⁸
I pray thee, give me a new loaf.

SUMMER
: Christmas, how chance thou com'st not as the rest,
Accompanied with some music, or some song?
A merry carol would have grac'd thee well;
Thy ancestors have us'd it heretofore.

CHRISTMAS
: Ay, antiquity was the mother of ignorance.
This latter world, that sees but with her spectacles, hath
spied a pad
¹⁷⁹
in those sports more than they could.

SUMMER
: What, is't against thy conscience for to sing?

CHRISTMAS
: No, nor to say, by my troth, if I may get a
good bargain.

SUMMER
: Why, thou should'st spend; thou should'st not care to get. Christmas is god of hospitality.

CHRISTMAS
: So will he never be of good husbandry. I may say to you, there is many an old god that is now grown out of fashion. So is the god of hospitality.

SUMMER
: What reason canst thou give he should be left?

CHRISTMAS
: No other reason but that Gluttony is a sin, and too many dunghills are infectious. A man's belly was not made for a powdering-beef tub.
¹⁸⁰
To feed the poor twelve days and let them starve all the year after would but stretch out the guts wider than they should be, and so make famine a bigger den in their bellies than he had before. I should kill an oxe and have some such fellow as Milo
¹⁸¹
to come and eat it up at a mouthful; or, like the Sybarites,
¹⁸²
do nothing all one year but bid guests against the next year. The scraping of trenchers you think would put a man to no charges. It is not a hundred pound a year would serve the scullions in dishclouts. My house stands upon vaults; it will fall if it be overladen with a multitude. Besides, have you never read of a city that was undermined and destroyed by moles?
¹⁸³
so, say i keep hospitality and bid me a whole fair of beggars
¹⁸⁴
to dinner every day, what with making legs
¹⁸⁵
when they thank me at their going away, and settling their wallets handsomely on their backs, they would shake as many lice on the ground as were able to undermine my house and undo me utterly. It is their prayers would built it again, if it were overthrown by this vermin, would it? I pray: who began feasting and gour-mandize first, but Sardanapalus, Nero, Heliogabalus,
Commodus, tyrants, whoremasters, unthrifts? Some call them Emperors, but I respect no crowns but crowns in the purse. Any man may wear a silver crown that hath made a fray in Smithfield, and lost but a piece of his brain-pan. And to tell you plainly, your golden crowns are little better in substance and many times got after the same sort.

SUMMER
: Gross-headed sot, how light he makes of state!

AUTUMN
: Who treadeth not on stars, when they are fallen?
Who talketh not of states, when they are dead?
A fool conceits
¹⁸⁶
no further than he sees;
He hath no sense of aught but what he feels.

CHRISTMAS
: Ay, ay, such wise men as you come to beg at such fool's doors as we be.

AUTUMN
: Thou shut'st thy door. How should we beg of thee?
No alms but thy sink carries from thy home.

WILL SUMMERS
: And I can tell you, that's as plentiful alms for the plague as the sheriffs tub
¹⁸⁷
to them of Newgate.

AUTUMN
: For feasts thou keepest none; cankers thou feed'st.
The worms will curse thy flesh another day,
Because it yieldeth them no fatter prey.

CHRISTMAS
: What worms do another day I care not, but I'll be sworn a whole kilderkin of single-beer I will not have a worm-eaten nose like a pursuivant
¹⁸⁸
while I live. Feasts are but puffing up of the flesh, the purveyors for diseases: travail, cost, time, ill-spent. Oh, it were a trim thing to send as the Romans did, round about the world for provision for one banquet. I must rig ships to Samos for peacocks, to Paphos for pigeons, to Austria for oysters, to Phasis for pheasants, to Arabia for phoenixes, to Meander for swans, to the Orcades for geese, to Phrygia for woodcocks, to Malta for cranes, to the Isle of Man for puffins, to Ambracia for goats, to Tartole for lamp
reys, to Egypt for dates, to Spain for chestnuts: and all for one feast!

WILL SUMMERS
: Oh sir, you need not. You may buy them at London better cheap.

CHRISTMAS
:
Liberalitas liberalitate perit
:
¹⁸⁹
Love me a little and love me long. Our feet must have wherewithal to fend the stones; our backs, walls of wool to keep out the cold that besiegeth our warm blood; our doors must have bars, our doublets must have buttons. Item: for an old sword to scrape the stones before the door with, three half-pence; for stitching a wooden tankard that was burst – these water-bearers will empty the conduit and a man's coffers at once. Not a porter that brings a man a letter but will have his penny. I am afraid to keep past one or two servants, lest, hungry knaves, they should rob me. And those I keep, I warrant I do not pamper up too lusty: I keep them under with red herring and poor-john
¹⁹⁰
all the year long. I have dammed up all my chimneys for fear (though I burn nothing but small coal) my house should be set on fire with the smoke. I will not deny, but once in a dozen year, when there is a great rot of sheep, and I know not what to do with them, I keep open-house for all the beggars, in some of my out-yards. Marry, they must bring bread with them: I am no baker.

WILL SUMMERS
: As good men as you, and have thought no scorn to serve their prenticeships on the pillory.

SUMMER
: Winter, is this thy son? Hear'st how he talks?

WINTER
: I am his father, therefore may not speak. But otherwise I could excuse his fault.

SUMMER
: Christmas, I tell thee plain, thou art a snudge,
¹⁹¹
And wert not that we love thy father well,
Thou should'st have felt what ‘longs to avarice.
It is the honour of nobility
To keep high days and solemn festivals,
Then, to set their magnificence to view,
To frolic open with their favourites,
And use their neighbours with all courtesy.
When thou in hugger-mugger
¹⁹²
spend'st thy wealth.
Amend thy manners, breathe thy rusty gold:
Bounty will win thee love when thou art old.

WILL SUMMERS
: Ay, that bounty would I fain meet to borrow money of. He is fairly blest nowadays that scapes blows when he begs.
Verba dandi et reddendi
¹⁹³
go together in the grammar rule. There is no giving but with condition of restoring:

Ah,
Benedicite
,
¹⁹⁴
Well is he hath no necessity
Of gold ne of sustenance;
Slow good hap comes by chance;
Flattery best fares;
Arts are but idle wares;
Fair words want giving hands;
The lento
¹⁹⁵
begs that hath no lands.
Fie on thee, thou scurvy knave,
That hast nought and yet goest brave;
¹⁹⁶
A prison be thy deathbed,
Or be hang'd all save the head.

SUMMER
: Backwinter, stand forth!

VERTUMNUS
: Stand forth, stand forth! Hold up your head, speak out!

BACKWINTER
: What, should I stand? Or whither should I go?

SUMMER
: Autumn accuseth thee of sundry crimes,
Which here thou art to clear or to confess.

BACKWINTER
: With thee or Autumn have I nought to do: I would you were both hanged face to face.

SUMMER
: Is this the reverence that thou ow'st to us?

BACKWINTER
: Why not? What art thou? Shalt thou always
live?

AUTUMN
: It is the veriest dog in Christendom.

WINTER
: That's for he barks at such a knave as thou.

BACKWINTER
: Would I could bark the sun out of the sky,
Turn moon and stars to frozen meteors,
And make the ocean a dry land of ice;
With tempests of my breath turn up high trees,
On mountains heap up second mounts of snow,
Which, melted into water, might fall down,
As fell the deluge on the former world.
I hate the air, the fire, the Spring, the year,
And whatsoe'er brings mankind any good.
Oh that my looks were lightning to blast fruits I
Would I with thunder presently might die,
So I might speak in thunder to slay men.
Earth, if I cannot injure thee enough,
I'll bite thee with my teeth, I'll scratch thee thus;
I'll beat down the partition with my heels,
Which, as a mud-vault, severs hell and thee.
Spirits, come up! ‘Tis I that knock for you,
One that envies the world far more than you.
Come up in millions; millions are too few
To execute the malice I intend.

SUMMER
:
O scelus inauditum, O vox damnatorum!
¹⁹⁷
Not raging Hecuba, whose hollow eyes
Gave suck to fifty sorrows
¹⁹⁸
at one time,
That midwife to so many murders was,
Us'd half the execrations that thou dost.

BACKWINTER
: More will I use, if more I may prevail.
Backwinter comes but seldom forth abroad,
But when he comes, he pincheth to the proof.
Winter is mild; his son is rough and stern.
Ovid could well write of my tyranny,
When he was banish'd to the frozen zone.

SUMMER
: And banish'd be thou from my fertile bounds.
Winter, imprison him in thy dark cell,
Or, with the winds, in bellowing caves of brass,
Let stern Hippotades
¹⁹⁹
lock him up safe,
Ne'er to peep forth, but when thou, faint and weak,
Want'st him to aid thee in thy regiment.

BACK WINTER
: I will peep forth, thy kingdom to supplant.
My father I will quickly freeze to death,
And then sole monarch will I sit, and think
How I may banish thee, as thou dost me.

WINTER
: I see my downfall written in his brows.
Convey him hence to his assigned hell.
Fathers are given to love their sons too well.

[
Exit Backwinter
.]

WILL SUMMERS
: No, by my troth, nor mothers neither. I am sure I could never find it. This Backwinter plays a railing part to no purpose; my small learning finds no reason for it, except as a backwinter or an after-winter is more raging-tempestuous and violent than the beginning of winter, so he brings him in stamping and raging as if he were mad, when his father is a jolly, mild, quiet old man, and stands still and does nothing. The court accepts of your meaning. You might have writ in the margent of your play-book: ‘Let there be a few rushes laid in the place where Backwinter shall tumble,
²⁰⁰
for fear of raying his clothes.' Or set down: ‘Enter Back-winter with his boy bringing a brush after him to take off the dust if need require.' But you will ne'er have any wardrobe-wit while you live. I pray you hold the book well;
²⁰¹
we will not
nonplus
in the latter end of the play.

SUMMER
: This is the last stroke my tongue's clock must strike,
My last will, which I will that you perform;
My crown I have dispos'd already of.
Item; I give my wither'd flowers and herbs
Unto dead corses, for to deck them with.
My shady walks to great men's servitors,
Who in their masters' shadows walk secure.
My pleasant open air and fragrant smells
To Croydon and the grounds abutting round.
My heat and warmth to toiling labourers,
My long days to bondmen and prisoners,
My short nights to young married souls,
My drought and thirst to drunkards' quenchless throats.
My fruits to Autumn, my adopted heir,
My murmuring springs, musicians of sweet sleep,
To murmuring malcontents, with their well-tuned cares,
Channel'd in a sweet-falling quaterzaine,
²⁰²
Do lull their ears asleep, listening themselves.
And finally (oh words, now cleanse your course),
Unto Eliza, that most sacred dame,
Whom none but saints and angels ought to name,
All my fair days remaining I bequeath,
To wait upon her till she be return'd.
Autumn, I charge thee, when that I am dead,
Be press'd and serviceable at her beck,
Present her with thy goodliest ripen'd fruits,
Unclothe no arbours where she ever sat,
Touch not a tree thou thinkst she may pass by.
And Winter, with thy writhen frosty face,
Smoothe up thy visage when thou look'st on her;
Thou never look'st on such bright majesty.
A charmed circle draw about her court,
Wherein warm days may dance and no cold come;
On seas let winds make war, not vex her rest,
Quiet enclose her bed, thought fly her breast.
Ah, gracious Queen, though Summer pine away,
Yet let thy flourishing stand at a stay;
First droop this universal's aged frame,
Ere any malady thy strength should tame.
Heaven raise up pillars to uphold thy hand,
Peace may have still his temple in thy land.
Lo, I have said; this is the total sum.
Autumn and Winter, on your faithfulness
For the performance I do firmly build
Farewell, my friends; Summer bids you farewell,
Archers and bowlers, all my followers,
Adieu, and dwell with desolation;
Silence must be your master's mansion.
Slow marching thus, descend I to the fiends.
Weep, heavens; mourn, earth; here Summer ends.