Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham

To Sir John Mennis, Being Invited From Calais to Boulogne, to Eat a Pig

1 All on a weeping Monday,
  With a fat vulgarian sloven,
    Little admiral John
    To Boulogne is gone,
  Whom I think they call old Loven.

2 Hadst thou not thy fill of carting,1
  Will Aubrey, Count of Oxon,
    When nose lay in breech,
    And breech made a speech,
  So often cried, A pox on?

3 A knight by land and water
  Esteem’d at such a high rate,
    When ’tis told in Kent,
    In a cart that he went,
  They’ll say now, Hang him, pirate.

4 Thou might’st have ta’en example
  From what thou read’st in story;
    Being as worthy to sit
    On an ambling tit
  As thy predecessor Dory.

5 But, oh, the roof of linen,
  Intended for a shelter!
    But the rain made an ass
    Of tilt and canvas,
  And the snow, which you know is a melter.

6 But with thee to inveigle
  That tender stripling Astcot,
    Who was soak’d to the skin,
    Through drugget so thin,
  Having neither coat nor waistcoat.

7 He being proudly mounted,
  Clad in cloak of Plymouth,
    Defied cart so base,
    For thief without grace,
  That goes to make a wry mouth.

8 Nor did he like the omen,
  For fear it might be his doom
    One day for to sing,
    With gullet in string,
  A hymn of Robert Wisdom.

9 But what was all this business?
  For sure it was important;
    For who rides i’ th’wet
    When affairs are not great,
  The neighbours make but a sport on’t.

10 To a goodly fat sow’s baby,
   O John! thou hadst a malice;
     The old driver of swine
     That day sure was thine,
   Or thou hadst not quitted Calais.

Notes

1 ‘Fill of carting’: we three riding in a cart from Dunkirk to Calais, with a fat Dutch woman.