Best, while you have it, use your breath;
There is no drinking after death.
"Then let us swill, boys, for our health,
Who drinks well, loves the commonwealth.
And he that will to bed go sober
Falls with the leaf still in October."
Upon this song successive changes have been rung, until now its variations are bewildering, and to it we owe the ever popular and utterly indefensible glee roared out for generations by many a lusty tavern chorus:—
"He who goes to bed, and goes to bed sober,
Falls as the leaves do, and dies in October;
But he who goes to bed, and goes to bed mellow,
Lives as he ought to do, and dies an honest fellow."
The most affectionate solicitude is continually manifested by seventeenth-century poets lest perchance unthinking mortals should neglect or overlook their opportunities of drinking, and so forfeit their full share of pleasure in a pleasant world.
is as much the motto of the drinker as of the lover, and the mutability of life forever warns him against wasting its flying moments in unprofitable soberness.
