Out of the woods we'll dance and sing
Under the morning-star of Spring,
Into the town with our fresh boughs
And knock at every sleeping house,
Not sighing,
Or crying,
Though Love knows no denying!
Then, round your summer queen and king,
Come, young lovers, dance and sing,
Dance and sing!
His motley shoulders heaved. I touched his arm,
"What ails you, sir?" He raised his thin white face,
Wet with the May-dew still. A few stray petals
Clung in his tangled hair. He leapt to his feet,
"'Twas February, but I danced, boy, danced
In May! Can you do this?" Forward he bent
Over his feet, and shuffled it, heel and toe,
Out of the Mermaid, singing his old song—
A-maying,
A-playing,
For Love knows no gain-saying!
Wisdom trips not? Even so,—
Come, young lovers, trip and go,
Trip and go.
Five minutes later, over the roaring Strand,
"Chorus!" I heard him crow, and half the town
Reeled into music under his crimson comb.
VI
BIG BEN
Gods, what a hubbub shook our cobwebs out
The day that Chapman, Marston and our Ben
Waited in Newgate for the hangman's hands.
Chapman and Marston had been flung there first
For some imagined insult to the Scots
In Eastward Ho, the play they wrote with Ben.
But Ben was famous now, and our brave law
Would fain have winked and passed the big man by.
The lesser men had straightway been condemned
To have their ears cut off, their noses slit.
With other tortures.
Ben had risen at that!
He gripped his cudgel, called for a quart of ale,
Then like Helvellyn with his rocky face
And mountain-belly, he surged along Cheapside,
Snorting with wrath, and rolled into the gaol,
To share the punishment.
"There is my mark!
'Tis not the first time you have branded me,"
Said our big Ben, and thrust his broad left thumb
Branded with T for Tyburn, into the face
Of every protest. "That's the mark you gave me
Because I killed my man in Spitalfields,
A duel honest as any your courtiers fight.
But I was no Fitzdotterel, bore no gules
And azure, robbed no silk-worms for my hose,
I was Ben Jonson, out of Annandale,
Bricklayer in common to the good Lord God.
You branded me. I am Ben Jonson still.
You cannot rub it out."