 | Poems on Several Occasions |  |
105
Clepsydra.
I
Why, let it run! who bids it stay?Let us the while be merry;
Time there in water creeps away,
With us it posts in Sherry.
II
Time not employ'd's an empty sound,Nor did kind Heaven lend it,
But that the Glass should quick goe round,
And men in pleasure spend it.
III
Then set thy foot, brave Boy, to mine,Ply quick to cure our thinking;
An hour-glass in an hour of Wine
Would be but lazy drinking.
106
IV
The man that snores the hour-glass outIs truly a time-waster,
But we, who troll this glass about,
Make him to post it faster.
V
Yet though he flies so fast, some think,'Tis well known to the Sages,
He'll not refuse to stay and drink,
And yet perform his stages.
VI
Time waits us whilst we crown the hearth,And dotes on Rubie Faces,
And knows that this Carier of mirth
Will help to mend our paces:
VII
He stays with him that loves good time,And never does refuse it,
And only runs away from him
That knows not how to use it:
107
VIII
He only steals by without noiseFrom those in grief that waste it,
But lives with the mad roaring Boys
That husband it, and taste it.
IX
The moralist perhaps may prateOf vertue from his reading,
'Tis all but stale and foisted chat
To men of better breeding.
X
Time, to define it, is the spaceThat men enjoy their being;
'Tis not the hour, but drinking glass,
Makes time and life agreeing.
XI
He wisely does oblige his fateDoes chearfully obey it,
And is of Fops the greatest that
By temp'rance thinks to stay it.
108
XII
Come, ply the Glass then quick about,To titillate the Gullet,
Sobriety's no charm, I doubt,
Against a Cannon-Bullet.
| Poems on Several Occasions | |