YE

E true honest Britons who love your own land,

Whose fires were so brave, so victorious and free, Who always beat France when they took her in hand,

Come join, honest Britons, in chorus with me. Let us sing our own treasures, old Englands good cheer, The profits and pleasures of stout British beer Your winc-tipling, dram-fipping fellows retreat, But your beer-drinking Britons can never be beat.

The French with their vineyards are meagre and pale,

They drink of the squeezings of half-ripen'd fruit, But we who have hop-grounds to mellow our ale,

Are rofy and plump, and have freedom to boot. Let us fing, &c. Should the French dare invade us thus arm'd with our

poles,
We'll bang their bare ribs, make their lantern-jaws ring,
For your beef-eating, beer-drinking britons are fouls,
Who will spend their last drop for their country and

king.
Let us sing our own treasures, old Englands good cheer,
The profits and pleasures of stout British beer
Your wine-tipling, dram-fipping fellows retreat,
But your beer-drinking Britons can never be beat.

SONG XLVIII.
IN PRAISE OF ALE.
THEN the chill Sirocco blows,

And winter tells a heavy tale,
When pies, and daws, and rooks, and crows,
Do fit and curse the frosts and snows,

Then give me ale.
Ale in a Saxon rumkin then,
Such aś will make Grimalkin prate,
Bids valour burgeon in tall men,
Quickens the poets wit and pen,

Despises fate.
Ale, that the absent battle fights,
And forms the march of Swedish drum,
Disputes with princes, laws and rights,
What's done and past tells mortal wights
And what's to come,

Ale,

WHEN

Ale, that the plowmans heart upkeeps,
And equals it to tyrants thrones,
That wipes the eye that over-weeps,
And lulls in sweet and dainty feeps,

The o'er wearied bones.

Grand child of Ceres, Bacchus' daughter,
Wines emulous neighbour if but Nale,
Ennobling all the nymphs of water,
And filling cach mans heart with laaghter,

Oh! give me ale.

0.

THE EX-ALE-T ATION OF ALE.

NoT

OT drunken, nor sober, but neighbour to both,

I met with a friend in Alesbury vale ; He saw by my face, that I was in good case

To speak no great harm of a pot of good ale.

Then did he me greet, and said, since we meet,

(And he put me in mind of the name of the dale) For Alesburys fake some pains I would take,

And not bury the praise of a pot of good ale.

The more to procure me, ihen he did adjure me

If the ale I drank last were nappy and ftale, To do it its right, and fir up my spritę,

And fall to commend a pot of good ale.

Quoth

Quoth I, to commend it I dare not begin,

Left therein my credit might happen to fail ; For many men now do count it a fin,

But once to look toward a pot of good ale.

Yet I care not a pin, for I see no such fin,

Nor any thing else my courage to quail : For this we do find, that take it in kind,

Much virtue there is in a pot of good ale.

And I mean not to taste, though thereby much grac’d,

Nor the merry-go-down without pull or hale, Perfuming the throat, when the stomach's afloat,

With the fragrant sweet scent of a pot of good ale.

Nor yet the delight that comes to the fight,

To see how it flowers and mantles in graile, As green as a leek, with a smile in the cheek,

The true orient colour of a pot of good ale.

But I mean the mind and the good it doth find ;

Not only the body so feeble and frail ;
For body and soul may bless the black bowl,

Since both are beholden to a pot of good ale.
For when heaviness the mind doth oppress,

And sorrow and grief the heart do assail,
No remedy quicker than to take off your liquor,

And to wash away cares with a pot of good ale.

The widow that buried her husband of late,

Will soon have forgotten to weep and to wail. And think every day twain, till the marry again,

If he read the contents of a po: of good ale.

It is like the belly-blast to a cold heart,

And warms and engenders the spirits vitale,
To keep them from damage all sp’rits owe their homage,

To the sprite of the buttery, a pot of good ale.

And down the legs to the virtue doth go,

And to a bad footman is as good as a sail ;
When it fills the veins, and makes light the brains :

No lacky so nimble as a pot of good ale.

The naked complains not for want of a coat,

Nor on the cold weather will once turn his tail ;
All the way as he goes, he cuts the wind with his nose,

If he be but well wrapp'd in a pot of good ale.

The hungry man takes no thought for his meat,

Though his ftomach would brook a ten-penny nail ; He quite forgets hunger, thinks on it no longer,

If he touch but the sparks of a pot of good ale. The poor man will praise it, so hath he good cause,

That all the year eats neither partridge nor quail, But sets up his rest, and makes up his feast,

With a crust of brown bread, and a pot of good ale. The shepherd, the sower, the thresher, the mower,

The one with his scythe, the other with his flail, Take them out by the poll, on the peril of my soul,

All will hold up their hands to a pot of good ale.

The blacksmith whose bellows all summer do blow,

With the fire in his face ftill without e'er a veil, Though his throat be full dry he will tell you no lie But where you may be sure of a pot of good ale.

Whoever