The bowl goes trim, the moon doth shine,
And our ballast is old wine;
And your ballast is old wine.”
Last, but by no means least, in “Crotchet Castle,” we have a drinking-song at once the kindest and the most scandalous that the poet ever wrote,—a song which is the final, definite, unrepentant expression of heterodoxy:—
“If I drink water while this doth last,
May I never again drink wine;
For how can a man, in his life of a span,
Do anything better than dine?
We’ll dine and drink, and say if we think
That anything better can be;