A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 09 - Unknown

ACADEMICO.
Adieu, you gentle spirits, long adieu;
Your wits I love, and your ill-fortunes rue.
I'll haste me to my Cambridge cell again;
My fortunes cannot wax, but they may wain.

INGENIOSO.
Adieu, good shepherds; happy may you live.
And if hereafter in some secret shade
You shall recount poor scholars' miseries,
Vouchsafe to mention with tear-swelling eyes
Ingenioso's thwarting destinies.
And thou, still happy Academico,
That still may'st rest upon the muses' bed,
Enjoying there a quiet slumbering,
When thou repair'st[138] unto thy Granta's stream,
Wonder at thine own bliss, pity our case,
That still doth tread ill-fortune's endless maze;
Wish them, that are preferment's almoners,
To cherish gentle wits in their green bud;
For had not Cambridge been to me unkind,
I had not turn'd to gall a milky mind.

PHILOMUSUS.
I wish thee of good hap a plenteous store;
Thy wit deserves no less, my love can wish no more.
Farewell, farewell, good Academico;
Ne'er may'st thou taste of our fore-passed woe.
We wish thy fortunes may attain their due.—
Furor and you, Phantasma, both adieu,

ACADEMICO.
Farewell, farewell, farewell; O, long farewell!
The rest my tongue conceals, let sorrow tell.

PHANTASMA. Et longum vale, inquit Iola.

FUROR.
Farewell, my masters; Furor's a masty dog,
Nor can with a smooth glosing farewell cog.
Nought can great Furor do but bark and howl,
And snarl, and grin, and carl, and touse the world,
Like a great swine, by his long, lean-ear'd lugs.
Farewell, musty, dusty, rusty, fusty London;
Thou art not worthy of great Furor's wit,
That cheatest virtue of her due desert,
And suffer'st great Apollo's son to want.

INGENIOSO.
Nay, stay awhile, and help me to content
So many gentle wits' attention,
Who ken the laws of every comic stage,
And wonder that our scene ends discontent.
Ye airy wits subtle,
Since that few scholars' fortunes are content,
Wonder not if our scene ends discontent.
When that your fortunes reach their due content,
Then shall our scene end here in merriment.

PHILOMUSUS.
Perhaps some happy wit with seely[139] hand
Hereafter may record the pastoral
Of the two scholars of Parnassus hill,
And then our scene may end, and have content.

INGENIOSO.
Meantime, if there be any spiteful ghost,
That smiles to see poor scholars' miseries,
Cold is his charity, his wit too dull:
We scorn his censure, he's a jeering gull.
But whatsoe'er refined sprites there be,
That deeply groan at our calamity:
Whose breath is turn'd to sighs, whose eyes are wet,
To see bright arts bent to their latest set;
Whence never they again their heads shall rear,
To bless our art-disgracing hemisphere,
Let them. |
|
FUROR. |
Let them. | all give us a plaudite.
|
PHANTASMA. |
Let them.