Come, Anthea, let us two <br />Go to feast, as others do: <br />Tarts and custards, creams and cakes, <br />Are the junkets still at wakes; <br />Unto which the tribes resort, <br />Where the business is the sport: <br />Morris-dancers thou shalt see, <br />Marian, too, in pageantry; <br />And a mimic to devise <br />Many grinning properties. <br />Players there will be, and those <br />Base in action as in clothes; <br />Yet with strutting they will please <br />The incurious villages. <br />Near the dying of the day <br />There will be a cudgel-play, <br />Where a coxcomb will be broke, <br />Ere a good word can be spoke: <br />But the anger ends all here, <br />Drench'd in ale, or drown'd in beer. <br />--Happy rusticks! best content <br />With the cheapest merriment; <br />And possess no other fear, <br />Than to want the Wake next year.<br /><br />Robert Herrick<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-wake-2/
