'What's the use o' making such a fuss about nothing?' Ronald grumbled.
'What?' retorted the big skipper facetiously. 'Naething? Is bringing out a new poet naething?'
Now this drinking song, as it turned out, was a very curious kind of drinking song. Observe that it was written by a young fellow of eight-and-twenty; of splendid physique, and of as yet untouched nerve, who could not possibly have had wide experience of the vanities and disappointments of human life. What iron had entered into his soul, then, that a gay and joyous drinking song should have been written in this fashion?—
Good friends and neighbours, life is short,
And man, they say, is made to mourn;
Dame Fortune makes us all her sport,
And laughs our very best to scorn:
Well, well; we'll have, if that be so,
A merry glass before we go.
The blue-eyed lass will change her mind,