Fly, fly from the coast, Or you’re lost, And the water will run where the drink went; From hence you must slink, If you have no chink, ’Tis the course of the royal delinquent; You love to see beer-bowls turn’d over the thumb well, You like three fair gamesters, four dice, and a drum well, But you’d as lief see the devil as Fairfax or Cromwell. Drink, drink not the round, You’ll be drown’d In the source of your sack and your sonnets; Try once more your fate For the King against the State, And go barter your beavers for bonnets. You see how they’re charm’d by the King’s enchanters, And therefore pack hence to Virginia for planters, For an act and two red-coats will rout all the ranters. THE ANSWER. By Alex. Brome. STAY, stay, prate no more, Lest thy brain, like thy purse, run the score, Though thou strain’st it; Those are traitors in grain That of sack do complain, And rail by its own power against it. Those kingdoms and crowns which your poetry pities, Are fall’n by the pride and hypocrisy of cities, And not by those brains that love sack and good ditties; The K. and his progeny had kept them from sinking, Had they had no worse foes than the lads that love drinking, We that tipple ha’ no leisure for plotting or thinking. He is an ass That doth throw down himself with a glass Of Canary; He that’s quiet will think Much the better of drink, ’Cause the cups made the camp to miscarry. You whore while we tipple, and there, my friend, you lie, Your sports did determine in the month of July; There’s less fraud in plain damme than your sly by my truly; ’Tis sack makes our bloods both purer and warmer, We need not your priest or the feminine charmer, For a bowl of Canary’s a whole suit of armour. Hold, hold, not so fast, Tipple on, for there is no such haste To be going; We drowning may fear, But your end will be there Where there is neither swimming nor rowing. We were gamesters alike, and our stakes were both down, boys, But Fortune did favour you, being her own, boys; And who would not venture a cast for a crown, boys? Since we wear the right colours, he the worst of our foes is That goes to traduce, and fondly supposes That Cromwell’s an enemy to sack and red noses.