laying,
For Love knows no gain-saying!
Wisdom trips not? Even so,--
Come, young lovers, trip and go,
Trip and go.

Five minutes later, over the roaring Strand,
"_Chorus!_" I heard him crow, and half the town
Reeled into music under his crimson comb.

VI

BIG BEN

Gods, what a hubbub shook our cobwebs out
The day that Chapman, Marston and our Ben
Waited in Newgate for the hangman's hands.

Chapman and Marston had been flung there first
For some imagined insult to the Scots
In _Eastward Ho_, the play they wrote with Ben.
But Ben was famous now, and our brave law
Would fain have winked and passed the big man by.
The lesser men had straightway been condemned
To have their ears cut off, their noses slit.
With other tortures.

Ben had risen at that!
He gripped his cudgel, called for a quart of ale,
Then like Helvellyn with his rocky face
And mountain-belly, he surged along Cheapside,
Snorting with wrath, and rolled into the gaol,
To share the punishment.

"There is my mark!
'Tis not the first time you have branded me,"
Said our big Ben, and thrust his broad left thumb
Branded with T for Tyburn, into the face
Of every protest. "That's the mark you gave me
Because I killed my man in Spitalfields,
A duel honest as any your courtiers fight.
But I was no Fitzdotterel, bore no gules
And azure, robbed no silk-worms for my hose,
I was Ben Jonson, out of Annandale,
Bricklayer in common to the good Lord God.
You branded me. I am Ben Jonson still.
You cannot rub it out."

The Mermaid Inn
Buzzed like a hornet's nest, upon the day
Fixed for their mutilation. And the stings
Were ready, too; for rapiers flashed and clashed
Among the tankards. Dekker was there, and Nash,
Brome (Jonson's body-servant, whom he taught
His art of verse and, more than that, to love him,)
And half a dozen more. They planned to meet
The prisoners going to Tyburn, and attempt
A desperate rescue.

All at once we heard
A great gay song come marching down the street,
A single voice, and twenty marching men,
Then the full chorus, twenty voices strong:--

The prentice whistles at break of day
All under fair