Jaco. O where doth piety and pity rest?
Qua. Fetch cords; he’s irrecoverable; mad, rank mad.
He calls for strange chimeras, fictions,
That have no being since the curse of death
Was thrown on man. Pity and piety,
Who’ll deign converse with them? Alas! vain head,
Pity and piety are long since dead.
Jaco. Ruin to chance, and all that strive to stand 50
Like swoll’n Colossus on her tottering base!
Fortune is blind—
Qua. You lie! you lie!
None but a madman would term fortune blind.
How can she see to wound desert so right,
Just in the speeding-place?[406] to girt lewd brows
With honor’d wreath? Ha! Fortune blind? Away!
How can she, hood-wink’d, then so rightly see
To starve rich worth and glut iniquity?
Jaco. O love!
Qua. Love! Hang love.
It is the abject outcast of the world. 60
Hate all things; hate the world, thyself, all men;
Hate knowledge; strive not to be over-wise:
It drew destruction into Paradise.
Hate honor, virtue; they are baits
That ’tice men’s hopes to sadder fates.
Hate beauty: every ballad-monger
Can cry his idle foppish humour.
Hate riches: wealth’s a flattering Jack;
Adores to face, mews ’hind thy back.
He that is poor is firmly sped; 70
He never shall be flatterèd.
All things are error, dirt and nothing,
Or pant with want, or gorged to loathing.
Love only hate, affect no higher
Than praise of Heaven, wine, a fire.
Suck up thy days in silent breath,
When their snuff’s out, come Signior Death.
Now, sir, adieu, run mad and wilt;[407]
The worst is this, my rhyme’s but spilt.
Jaco. Thy rhymes are spilt! who would not run rank mad, 80
To see a wandering Frenchman rival, nay,
Outstrip my suit? He kiss’d my Celia’s cheek.
Qua. Why, man, I saw my dog even kiss thy Celia’s lips.
Jaco. To-morrow morn they go to wed.