He once was catch'd in the venereal sin,
And, being punish'd, did experience win;
That careful fear his conscience so did strike,
He never would again attempt the like.
Which to our understandings may express,
Men's days are shorten'd through lasciviousness:
And that a competent contenting diet

Makes men live long, and soundly sleep in quiet.
Mistake me not, I speak not to debar

Good fare of all sorts, for all creatures are
Made for man's use, and may by man be us'd
Not by voracious gluttony abus'd.

For he that dares to scandal or deprave

Good housekeeping; Oh! hang up snch a knave:

Rather commend, what is not to be found,

Than injure that, which makes the world renown'd.

Bounty hath got a spice of lethargy,

And liberal noble hospitality

Lies in consumption, almost pin'd to death,
And charity benumb'd, ne'er out of breath.
May England's few good housekeepers be blest,
With endless glory, and eternal rest;

And may their goods, lands, and their happy seed,
With heav'n's best blessings, multiply and breed.
'Tis madness to build high, with stone and lime,
Great houses, that may seem the clouds to clime:
With spacious halls, large galleries, brave rooms,
Fit to receive a King, Peers, 'Squires, and Grooms;
Amongst which rooms, the devil hath put a witch in,
And made a small tobacco box the kitchin;
For covetousness the mint of mischief is,
And christian bounty the high-way to bliss.
To wear a farm in shoe-strings edg'd with gold,
And spangled garters worth a copy hold:
A hose and doublet, which a lordship cost;
A gawdy cloke, three manors price almost:
A beaver, band, and feather for the head,
Priz'd at the church's tythe, the poor
man's bread;
For which the wearers are fear'd, and abhorr'd,
Like Jeroboam's golden calves ador❜d.

This double, treble-aged man, I wot,

Knew and remember'd, when these things were not. Good wholsome labour was his exercise,

Down with the lamb, and with the lark would rise;

In mire and toiling sweat he spent the day,

And to his team he whistled time away:

The cock his night-clock, and, till day was done,
His watch, and chief sun-dial, was the sun.
He was of old Pythagoras' opinion,

That green cheese was most wholsome with an onion;

Coarse meslin bread, and for his daily swig,
Milk, butter milk, and water, whey, and whig:
Sometimes metheglin, and by fortune happy,
He sometimes sip'd a cup of ale most nappy,
Cyder, or perry, when he did repair,
T'a Whitson ale, wake, wedding, or a fair:
Or when in Christmas time he was a guest,
At his good landlord's house amongst the rest :
Else he had little leisure time to waste,
Or, at the alehouse, huff-cap ale to taste;
Nor did he ever hunt a tavern fox,

Ne'er knew a coach, tobacco, or the pox.
His physick was good butter, which the soil
Of Salop yields, more sweet than candy oil;
And garlick he esteem'd above the rate
Of Venice treacle, or best Mithridate.
He entertain'd no gout, no ach he felt,

The air was good, and tempʼrate, where he dwelt,
Whilst mavisses, and sweet tongu'd nightingales,
Did chant him roundelays, and madrigals.
Thus living within bounds of nature's laws,
Of his long lasting life may be some cause :

For, though th' Almighty all man's days doth measure,
And doth dispose of life and death at pleasure,
Yet, nature being wrong'd, man's days and date
May be abridg'd, and God may tolerate.

But had the father of this Thomas Parr,
His grandfather, and his great grandfather;
Had their lives threads so long a length been spun,
They by succession might, from sire to son,
Have been unwritten chronicles, and by
Tradition shew time's mutability:

Then Parr might say, he heard his father well
Say, that his grand-sire heard his father tell
The death of famous Edward the Confessor,
Harold, and William conq'ror, his successor;
How his son Robert won Jerusalem,

O'ercame the Saracens, and conquer'd them:
How Rufus reign'd, and's brother Henry next,
And how usurping Stev'n this kingdom vext:
How Maud the Empress, the first Henry's daughter,
To gain her right, fill'd England full of slaughter:
Of Second Henry's Rosamond the Fair,
Of Richard Cœur de Lyon, his brave heir,
King John, and of the foul suspicion

Of Arthur's death, John's elder brother's son.
Of the Third Henry's long reign, sixty years,
The barons wars, the loss of wrangling peers.
How Long-shanks did the Scots and French convince,
Tam'd Wales, and made his hapless son their prince.

How Second Edward was Caernarvon call'd,
Beaten by Scots, and by his Queen enthrall'd.
How the Third Edward fifty years did reign,
And th' honour'd Garter's order did ordain.
Next how the Second Richard liv'd and dy'd,
And how Fourth Henry's faction did divide
The realm with civil, most uncivil, war
"Twixt long contending York and Lancaster.
How the Fifth Henry sway'd, and how his son,
Sixth Henry, a sad pilgrimage did run.
Then of Fourth Edward, and fair Mistress Shore,
King Edward's concubine, Lord Hastings-
Then how Fifth Edward, murther'd with a trick
Of the Third Richard, and then how that Dick
Was by Seventh Henry slain at Bosworth Field,
How he and's son, th' Eighth Henry, here did wield
The scepter; how Sixth Edward sway'd,
How Mary rul'd, and how that royal maid
Elisabeth did govern, best of dames,

And, Phoenix-like, expir'd; and how just James,
Another Phoenix from her ashes claims,
The right of Britain's scepter, as his own,
But, changing for a better, left the crown,
Where now 'tis, with King Charles, and may it be
With him, and his most bless'd posterity,
Till time shall end; be they on earth renown'd
And after with eternity be crown'd.
Thus, had Parr had good breeding, without reading,
He from his sire, and grandsire's sire, proceeding,
By word of mouth hath told most famous things,
Done in the reigns of all those queens and kings.
But he in husbandry hath been brought up,
And ne'er did taste the Heliconian cup;
He ne'er knew history, nor in mind did keep
Aught, but the price of corn, hay, kine, or sheep.
Day found him work, and night allow'd him rest,
Nor did affairs of state his brain molest:-
His high'st ambition was a tree to lop,
Or at the furthest to a may-pole's top;
His recreation, and his mirth's discourse,
Hath been the piper, and the hobby-horse.
And in this simple sort he did, with pain,
From childhood live to be a child again.
'Tis strange, a man, that was in years so grown,
Should not be rich; but to the world 'tis known,
That he that's born, in any land, or nation,
Under a twelve-pence planet's domination,
By working of that planet's influence,
Shall never live to be worth thirteen pence;

VOL. IV.

Whereby, altho' his learning did not shew it,
H'was rich enough to be, like me, a poet,
But, e're I do conclude, I will relate
Of reverend age's honourable state :

Where shall a young man good instructions have
But from the ancient, from experience grave?
Roboam, son and heir to Solomon,
Rejecting ancient counsel, was undone
Almost; for ten of the twelve tribes fell
To Jeroboam, King of Israel;

And all wise princes, and great potentates,
Select and chuse old men as magistrates,
Whose wisdom, and whose reverend aspect,
Knows how and when to punish, or protect.
The patriarchs long lives, before the flood,
Were given them, as 'tis rightly understood,
To store and multiply by procreations,
That people should inhabit and breed nations;
That th' ancients their posterities might show
The secrets deep of nature, how to know
To scale the sky with learn'd astronomy,
And sound the ocean's deep profundity;
But, chiefly, how to serve and to obey

God, who did make them out of slime and clay.
Should men live now, as long as they did then,
The earth could not sustain the breed of men.
Each man had many wives; which bigamy
Was such increase to their posterity,
That one old man might see, before he dy❜d,
That his own only offspring had supply'd
And peopled kingdoms.

But now so brittle's the estate of man,
That, in comparison, his life's a span;
Yet, since the flood, it may be proved plain,
That many did a longer life retain,
Than him I write of; for Arphaxad liv'd
Four hundred thirty-eight; Salah surviv'd
Four hundred thirty-three years; Eber more,
For he liv'd twice two hundred sixty-four.
Two hundred years Terah was alive,
And Abrham liv'd one hundred seventy-five.
Before Job's troubles, holy writ relates,

His sons and daughters were at marriage-states;
And, after his restoring, 'tis most clear,
That he surviv'd one-hundred forty year.
John Buttadeus, if report be true,

Is his name, that is stil'd The Wand'ring Jew :
"Tis said, he saw our Saviour die, and how
He was a man then, and is living now;

read;

Whereof relations you that will may
But pardon me, 'tis no part of my creed.
Upon a German's age 'tis written thus,
That one Johannes de Temporibus
Was armour-bearer to brave Charlemain;
And that unto the age he did attain
Of years three hundred sixty-one, and then
Old John of Times return'd to earth again.
And noble Nestor, at the siege of Troy,
Had liv'd three hundred years, both man and boy.
Sir Walter Raleigh, a most learned knight,
Doth of an Irish countess, Desmond, write,
Of sevenscore years of age, he with her spake;
The Lord St. Alban's doth more mention make,
That she was married in Fourth Edward's reign;
Thrice shed her teeth, which three times came again.
The Highland Scots and the wild Irish are
Long-liv'd with labour hard and temp❜rate fare.
Amongst the barbarous Indians, some live strong
And lusty, near two hundred winters long:
So, as I said before, my verse now says,
By wronging nature men cut off their days.
Therefore, as times are, he, I now write on,
The of all in Britain hath out-gone:
age
All those, that were alive when he had birth,
Are turn'd again unto their mother earth :
of them live, and do reply,

If any

I will be sorry, and confess I lye.

For, had he been a merchant, then, perhaps,
Storms, thunder-claps, or fear of after-claps,
Sands, rocks, or roving pirates, gusts and storms,
Had made him, long before, the food of worms:
Had he a mercer, or a silkman, been,
And trusted much, in hope great gain to win,
And late and early striv'd to get, or save;
Or had he been a judge, or magistrate,
Or of great counsel in affairs of state;
Then days important business, and nights cares,
Had long before interr'd his hoary hairs;
But, as I writ before, no cares oppress'd him,
Nor ever did affairs of state molest him.
Some may object, That they will not believe
His
age to be so much; for none can give
Account thereof, time being past so far,
And, at his birth, there was no register:
The register was, ninety-seven years since,
Giv'n by th' Eighth Henry, that illustrious prince,
Th'
year fifteen hundred forty, wanting twain,
And in the thirtieth year of that king's reign;