More wistfully, by many times.
Than in small poets' splay-foot rhymes,[1]
That make her, in their ruthful stories,
To answer to inter'gatories.
And most unconscionably depose195
To things of which she nothing knows;
And when she has said all she can say,
'Tis wrested to the lover's fancy.
Quoth he, O whither, wicked Bruin,
Art thou fled to my—Echo, ruin.200
I thought th' hadst scorn'd to budge a step,
For fear. Quoth Echo, Marry guep.[2]
Am not I here to take thy part?
Then what has quail'd thy stubborn heart?
Have these bones rattled, and this head205
So often in thy quarrel bled?
Nor did I ever wince or grudge it,
For thy dear sake. Quoth she, Mum budget.[3]
Thinks't thou 'twill not be laid i' th' dish[4]
Thou turn'dst thy back? Quoth Echo, Pish.210
To run from those th' hadst overcome
Thus cowardly? Quoth Echo, Mum.
But what a-vengeance makes thee fly
From me too, as thine enemy?
- ↑ Supposed to he a sneer at Sir Philip Sidney, who in his Arcadia has a long poem between the speaker and Echo.
- ↑ An exclamation or small oath, having no particular import, apparently the origin of our Marry come up. It is used by Taylor the Water Poet, Ben Jonson, and Gayton in his Translation of Don Quixote.
- ↑ That is, "be silent," in allusion to what Shakspeare puts into the mouth of Master Slander: "I come to her in white, ancl cry mum; she cries budget; and by that we know one another."—Merry Wives, Act v. sc. 2.
- ↑ To lay in one's dish, to make an accusation against one, to lay a charge at one's door.
Last night you lay it, madam, in our dish,
How that a maid of ours (whom we must check)
Had broke your bitches leg.
Sir John Harrington, Epigr. i. 27.
kind of device," and cites Erasmus's Dialogues, where an Echo is made to answer in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. But all the ancient Echoes are outdone by the Irish Echo, which in answer to "How do you do, Paddy Blake?" echoed, "Pretty well, thank you."
