You’re my friend-- What a thing friendship is, world without end! How it gives the heart and soul a stir-up As if somebody broached you a glorious runlet, And poured out, all lovelily, sparklingly, sunlit, Our green Moldavia, the streaky syrup, Cotnar as old as the time of the Druids-- Friendship may match with that monarch of fluids; {840} Each supples a dry brain, fills you its ins-and-outs, Gives your life’s hour-glass a shake when the thin sand doubts Whether to run on or stop short, and guarantees Age is not all made of stark sloth and arrant ease. I have seen my little lady once more, Jacynth, the gypsy, Berold, and the rest of it, For to me spoke the Duke, as I told you before; I always wanted to make a clean breast of it: And now it is made--why, my heart’s blood, that went trickle, Trickle, but anon, in such muddy driblets, {850} Is pumped up brisk now, through the main ventricle, And genially floats me about the giblets. I’ll tell you what I intend to do: I must see this fellow his sad life through-- He is our Duke, after all, And I, as he says, but a serf and thrall. My father was born here, and I inherit His fame, a chain he bound his son with; Could I pay in a lump I should prefer it, But there’s no mine to blow up and get done with: {860} So, I must stay till the end of the chapter. For, as to our middle-age-manners-adapter, Be it a thing to be glad on or sorry on, Some day or other, his head in a morion And breast in a hauberk, his heels he’ll kick up, Slain by an onslaught fierce of hiccup. And then, when red doth the sword of our Duke rust, And its leathern sheath lie o’ergrown with a blue crust, Then I shall scrape together my earnings; For, you see, in the churchyard Jacynth reposes, {870} And our children all went the way of the roses: It’s a long lane that knows no turnings. One needs but little tackle to travel in; So, just one stout cloak shall I indue: And for a staff, what beats the javelin With which his boars my father pinned you? And then, for a purpose you shall hear presently, Taking some Cotnar, a tight plump skinful, I shall go journeying, who but I, pleasantly! Sorrow is vain and despondency sinful. {880} What’s a man’s age? He must hurry more, that’s all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold: When we mind labor, then only, we’re too old-- What age had Methusalem when he begat Saul? And at last, as its haven some buffeted ship sees (Come all the way from the north-parts with sperm oil), I hope to get safely out of the turmoil And arrive one day at the land of the gypsies, And find my lady, or hear the last news of her