The sun in the morning disclosed his light, With complexion as ruddy as mine over night; And o'er th' eastern mountains peeping up's head, The casement being open, espied me in bed; With his rays he so tickled my lids that I waked, And was half ashamed, for I found myself naked; But up I soon start, and was dressed in a trice, And called for a draught of ale, sugar, and spice; Which having turned off, I then call to pay, And packing my nawls, whipt to horse, and away. A guide I had got, who demanded great vails, For conducting me over the mountains of Wales: Twenty good shillings, which sure very large is; Yet that would not serve, but I must bear his charges; And yet for all that, rode astride on a beast, The worst that e'er went on three legs, I protest: It certainly was the most ugly of jades, His hips and his rump made a right ace of spades; His sides were two ladders, well spur-galled withal; His neck was a helve, and his head was a mall; For his colour, my pains and your trouble I'll spare, For the creature was wholly denuded of hair; And, except for two things, as bare as my nail, A tuft of a mane, and a sprig of a tail; And by these the true colour one can no more know, Than by mouse-skins above stairs, the merkin below. Now such as the beast was, even such was the rider, With a head like a nutmeg, and legs like a spider; A voice like a cricket, a look like a rat, The brains of a goose, and the heart of a cat: Even such was my guide and his beast; let them pass, The one for a horse, and the other an ass. But now with our horses, what sound and what rotten, Down to the shore, you must know, we were gotten; And there we were told, it concerned us to ride, Unless we did mean to encounter the tide; And then my guide lab'ring with heels and with hands, With two up and one down, hopped over the sands, Till his horse, finding the labour for three legs too sore, Foaled out a new leg, and then he had four: And now by plain dint of hard spurring and whipping, Dry-shod we came where folks sometimes take shipping; And where the salt sea, as the devil were in 't, Came roaring t' have hindered our journey to Flint; But we, by good luck, before him got thither, He else would have carried us, no man knows whither.