Robin And Harry.[1]

Robin to beggars with a curse,     Throws the last shilling in his purse;     And when the coachman comes for pay,     The rogue must call another day.         Grave Harry, when the poor are pressing     Gives them a penny and God's blessing;     But always careful of the main,     With twopence left, walks home in rain.         Robin from noon to night will prate,     Run out in tongue, as in estate;     And, ere a twelvemonth and a day,     Will not have one new thing to say.     Much talking is not Harry's vice;     He need not tell a story twice:     And, if he always be so thrifty,     His fund may last to five-and-fifty.         It so fell out that cautious Harry,     As soldiers use, for love must marry,     And, with his dame, the ocean cross'd;     (All for Love, or the World well Lost!) [2]     Repairs a cabin gone to ruin,     Just big enough to shelter two in;     And in his house, if anybody come,     Will make them welcome to his modicum     Where Goody Julia milks the cows,     And boils potatoes for her spouse;     Or darns his hose, or mends his breeches,     While Harry's fencing up his ditches.         Robin, who ne'er his mind could fix,     To live without a coach-and-six,     To patch his broken fortunes, found     A mistress worth five thousand pound;     Swears he could get her in an hour,     If gaffer Harry would endow her;     And sell, to pacify his wrath,     A birth-right for a mess of broth.         Young Harry, as all Europe knows,     Was long the quintessence of beaux;     But, when espoused, he ran the fate     That must attend the married state;     From gold brocade and shining armour,     Was metamorphosed to a farmer;     His grazier's coat with dirt besmear'd;     Nor twice a-week will shave his beard.         Old Robin, all his youth a sloven,     At fifty-two, when he grew loving,     Clad in a coat of paduasoy,     A flaxen wig, and waistcoat gay,     Powder'd from shoulder down to flank,     In courtly style addresses Frank;     Twice ten years older than his wife,     Is doom'd to be a beau for life;     Supplying those defects by dress,     Which I must leave the world to guess.