VILLON’S BALLADE OF GOOD COUNSEL, TO HIS FRIENDS OF EVIL LIFE. Nay, be you pardoner or cheat, Or cogger keen, or mumper shy, You’ll burn your fingers at the feat, And howl like other folks that fry. All evil folks that love a lie! And where goes gain that greed amasses, By wile, and trick, and thievery? ’Tis all to taverns and to lasses! Rhyme, rail, dance, play the cymbals sweet, With game, and shame, and jollity, Go jigging through the field and street, With _myst’ry_ and _morality_; Win gold at _gleek_,—and that will fly, Where all you gain at _passage_ passes,— And that’s? You know as well as I, ’Tis all to taverns and to lasses! Nay, forth from all such filth retreat, Go delve and ditch, in wet or dry, Turn groom, give horse and mule their meat, If you’ve no clerkly skill to ply; You’ll gain enough, with husbandry, But—sow hempseed and such wild grasses, And where goes all you take thereby?— ’Tis all to taverns and to lasses! ENVOY. Your clothes, your hose, your broidery, Your linen that the snow surpasses, Or ere they’re worn, off, off they fly, ’Tis all to taverns and to lasses! BALLADE OF RABBITS AND HARES. In a vision a Sportsman forlorn I beheld, in an isle of the West, And his purple and linen were torn, And he wailed, as he beat on his breast,— “My people are men dispossessed, They have vanished, and nobody cares,— They have passed to the place of their rest, They have gone with the Rabbits and Hares! “Oh, why was a gentleman born With a title, a name, and a crest, Where the Rabbit is treated with scorn, And the Hare is accounted a pest, By the lumbering farmer repressed, With his dogs, and his guns, and his snares? But my fathers have ended their quest, They have gone with the Rabbits and Hares! “Ah, woe for the clover and corn That the Rabbit was wont to infest! Ah, woe for my youth in its morn, When the farmer obeyed my behest! Happy days! like a wandering guest Ye have fled, ye are sped unawares; But my fathers are now with the blest, They have gone with the Rabbits and Hares!” ENVOY. Prince, mourn for a nation oppressed, And absorbed in her stocks and her shares, And bereaved of her bravest and best— They have gone with the Rabbits and Hares! VALENTINE IN FORM OF BALLADE. The soft wind from the south land sped, He set his strength to blow, From forests where Adonis bled, And lily flowers a-row: He crossed the straits like streams that flow, The ocean dark as wine, To my true love to whisper low, To be your Valentine.