Virtue smiles: cry holiday,
Dimples on her cheeks do dwell,
Virtue frowns, cry welladay,
Her love is Heaven, her hate is hell.
Since Heaven and hell obey her power,
Tremble when her eyes do lower.
Since Heaven and hell her power obey,
Where she smiles, cry holiday.
Holiday with joy we cry,
And bend, and bend, and merrily,
Sing hymns to Virtue’s deity:
Sing hymns to Virtue’s deity.
As they are about to depart, enter Two Old Men.
THE EPILOGUE AT COURT.[410]
1st O. Man. Nay stay, poor pilgrims, when I entered first
The circle of this bright celestial sphere,
I wept for joy, now I could weep for fear.
2nd O. Man. I fear we all like mortal men shall prove
Weak, not in love, but in expressing love.
1st O. Man. Let every one beg once more on his knee,
One pardon for himself, and one for me;
For I enticed you hither. O dear Goddess,
Breathe life in our numbed spirits with one smile,
And from this cold earth, we with lively souls,
Shall rise like men new-born, and make Heaven sound
With hymns sung to thy name, and prayers that we
May once a year so oft enjoy this sight,
Till these young boys change their curled locks to white,
And when gray-wingèd age sits on their heads,
That so their children may supply their steads,
And that Heaven’s great arithmetician,
Who in the scales of number weighs the world,
May still to forty-two add one year more,
And still add one to one, that went before,
And multiply four tens by many a ten:
To this I cry, Amen.
All. Amen, amen!
1st O. Man. Good-night, dear mistress, those that wish thee harm,
Thus let them stoop under destruction’s arm.