The Careless Gallant or "Post mortem nulla voluptas", by Thomas Jordan

[med_cat]

The Careless Gallant

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;
In frolics dispose your pounds, shillings, and pence,
For we shall be nothing a hundred years hence.

We'll sport and be free with Frank, Betty, and Dolly,
Have lobsters and oysters to cure melancholy;
Fish dinners will make a man spring like a flea,
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 beautiful bit who hath all eyes upon her,
That her honesty sells for a hogo of honor,
Whose lightness and brightness doth cast such a splendor,
That none are thought fit but the stars to attend her,
Though now she seems pleasant and sweet to the sense,
Will be damnable moldy a hundred years hence.

Your usurer that in the hundred takes twenty,
Who wants in his wealth and pines in his plenty,
Lays up for a season which he shall ne'er see,
The year of one thousand eight hundred and three,
Shall have changed all his bags, his houses and rents
For a worm-eaten coffin a hundred years hence.

Your Chancery lawyer, who by conscience thrives
In spinning a suit to the length of three lives,
A suit which the client doth wear out in slavery,
Whilst pleader makes conscience a cloak for his knavery,
Can boast of his cunning i' the present tense,
For non est inventus a hundred years hence.

Then why should we turmoil in cares and fears,
And turn our tranquility to sighs and tears?
Let's eat, drink and play ere the worms do corrupt us,
For I say that Post mortem nulla voluptas;
Let's deal with our damsels that we may from thence
Have broods to succeed us a hundred years hence.

(Thomas Jordan)

Comments

[duathir.livejournal.com]

A merry poem; thank you.

[med_cat]

You're most welcome! It is from my archives, and originally from an anthology I own ("Man Answers Death").

..."Life is a shipwreck, but we must all sing in our lifeboats." (Voltaire)