English

Come, follow me by the Smell,
Here's delicate Onyons to sell,
I promise to use you well.
They make the Blood warmer,
You'll feed like a Farmer:
For this is ev'ry Cook's Oponion,
No sav'ry Dish without an Onyon;
But lest your Kissing should be spoyl'd,
Your Onyons must be th'roughly boyl'd;
Or else you may spare
Your Mistress a Share,
The Secret will never be known;
She cannot discover
The Breath of her Lover,
But think it as sweet as her own.

Be not sparing
Leave off swearing.
Buy my herring
Fresh from Malahide,
Better never was tried.
Come, eat them with pure fresh butter and mustard,
Their bellies are soft, and as white as a custard.
Come, sixpence a dozen, to get me some bread,
Or, like my own herrings, I soon shall be dead.

Apples
Come buy my fine wares,
Plumbs, Apples and Pears,
A hundred a Penny,
In Conscience too many,
Come, will you have any;
My Children are seven,
I wish them in Heaven,
My Husband's a Sot,
With his Pipe and his Pot,
Not a Farthing will gain 'em,
And I must maintain 'em.
Asparagus

Ripe 'Sparagrass,
Fit for Lad or Lass,
To make their Water pass:
O, 'tis pretty Picking
With a tender Chicken.
Onyons

Come, follow me by the Smell,
Here's delicate Onyons to sell,

A grief without a pang — void, dark, and drear;
A stifling, drowsy, unimpassioned grief
That finds no natural outlet, no relief
In word, or sigh, or tear —
This, Sara, well thou know'st,
Is that sore evil which I dread the most
And oft'nest suffer in this heartless mood,
To other thoughts by yonder throstle wooed,
That pipes within the larch-tree not unseen
(The larch which pushes out in tassels green
Its bundled leafits), wooed to mild delights
By all the tender sounds and gentle sights

From Zapolya, Act IV, Scene II, LL. 56-71

Up, up! ye dames, ye lasses gay!
To the meadows trip away.
'Tis you must tend the flocks this morn,
And scare the small birds from the corn.
Not a soul at home may stay:
For the shepherds must go
With lance and bow
To hunt the wolf in the woods today.

Leave the hearth and leave the house
To the cricket and the mouse:
Find grannam out a sunny seat

PROLOGUE

S ELF-LOVE , which never rightly understood,
Makes poets still conclude their plays are good,
And malice, in all critics, reigns so high,
That for small errors they whole plays decry;
So that to see this fondness, and that spite,
You 'd think that none but madmen judge or write.
Therefore our poet, as he thinks not fit
T' impose upon you what he writes for wit;
So hopes, that leaving you your censures free,
You equal judges of the whole will be:

OR, TRUTH FOUND TOO LATE

PROLOGUE

SPOKEN BY MR. BETTERTON, REPRESENTING THE
GHOST OF SHAKESPEARE

See , my lov'd Britons, see your Shakespeare rise,
An awful ghost confess'd to human eyes!
Unnam'd, methinks, distinguish'd I had been
From other shades, by this eternal green,
About whose wreaths the vulgar poets strive,
And with a touch their wither'd bays revive.
Untaught, unpractic'd, in a barbarous age,

I

Can life be a blessing,
Or worth the possessing,
Can life be a blessing, if love were away?
Ah, no! tho' our love all night keep us waking,
And tho' he torment us with cares all the day,
Yet he sweetens, he sweetens our pains in the taking;
There's an hour at the last, there's an hour to repay.

II

In every possessing,
The ravishing blessing,
In every possessing the fruit of our pain,

Get all the gold and silver that you can,
Satisfy ambition, animate
The trivial days and ram them with the sun,
And yet upon these maxims meditate:
All women dote upon an idle man
Although their children need a rich estate;
No man has ever lived that had enough
Of children's gratitude or woman's love.

No longer in Lethean foliage caught
Begin the preparation for your death
And from the fortieth winter by that thought
Test every work of intellect or faith,
And everything that your own hands have wrought,

I

What shall I do with this absurdity —
O heart, O troubled heart — this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog's tail?
Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
Imagination, nor an ear and eye
That more expected the impossible —
No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly,
Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben's back
And had the livelong summer day to spend.
It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack,