But as I stared A sudden buffet from a brawny hand Made all my senses swim, and the room rang With laughter as upon the rush-strewn floor My feet slipped and I fell. Then a gruff voice Growled over me--"Get up now, John-a-dreams, Or else mine host must find another drawer! Hast thou not heard us calling all this while?" And, as I scrambled up, the rafters rang With cries of "Sack! Bring me a cup of sack! Canary! Sack! Malmsey! and Muscadel!" I understood and flew. I was awake, A leather-jerkined pot-boy to these gods, A prentice Ganymede to the Mermaid Inn! There, flitting to and fro with cups of wine, I heard them toss the Chrysomelan names From mouth to mouth--Lyly and Peele and Lodge, Kit Marlowe, Michael Drayton, and the rest, With Ben, rare Ben, brick-layer Ben, who rolled Like a great galleon on his ingle-bench. Some twenty years of age he seemed; and yet This young Gargantua with the bull-dog jaws, The T, for Tyburn, branded on his thumb, And grim pock-pitted face, was growling tales To Dekker that would fright a buccaneer.-- How in the fierce Low Countries he had killed His man, and won that scar on his bronzed fist; Was taken prisoner, and turned Catholick; And, now returned to London, was resolved To blast away the vapours of the town With Boreas-throated plays of thunderous mirth. "I'll thwack their Tribulation-Wholesomes, lad, Their Yellow-faced Envies and lean Thorns-i'-the-Flesh, At the _Black-friars Theatre_, or _The Rose_, Or else _The Curtain_. Failing these, I'll find Some good square inn-yard with wide galleries, And windows level with the stage. 'Twill serve My Comedy of Vapours; though, I grant. For Tragedy a private House is best, Or, just as Burbage tip-toes to a deed Of blood, or, over your stable's black half-door, Marked _Battlements_ in white chalk, your breathless David Glowers at the whiter Bathsheba within, Some humorous coach-horse neighs a 'hallelujah'! And the pit splits its doublets. Over goes The whole damned apple-barrel, and the yard Is all one rough and tumble, scramble and scratch Of prentices, green madams, and cut-purses For half-chewed Norfolk pippins. Never mind! We'll build the perfect stage in Shoreditch yet. And Will, there, hath half promised I shall write A piece for his own company! What d'ye think Of _Venus and Adonis_, his first heir, Printed last week? A bouncing boy, my lad! And he's at work on a Midsummer's Dream That turns the world to fairyland!"