ON JOHN DAWSON, BUTLER OF CHRIST-CHURCH.
Reading edition
Dawson the butler’s dead: Although I think Poets were ne’re infus’d with single drink, I’ll spend a farthing, muse; a watry verse Will serve the turn to cast upon his herse. If any cannot weep amongst us here, Take off his cup, and so squeeze out a tear. Weep, O ye barrels! let your drippings fall In trickling streams; make waste more prodigal Than when our beer was good, that John may float To Styx in beer, and lift up Charons boat With wholsome waves: and, as the conduits ran With claret at the Coronation, So let your channels flow with single tiff, For John, I hope, is crown’d: Take off your whiff, Ye men of rosemary[114], and drink up all, Remembring ’tis a butlers funeral: Had he been master of good double beer, My life for his, John Dawson had been here.