[The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]@TWC D-Link book
The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

PROLOGUE
24/99

KEMPTHORN in the pillory.

MERRY and a crowd of lookers-on.
KEMPTHORN (sings).
The world is full of care, Much like unto a bubble; Women and care, and care and women, And women and care and trouble.
Good Master Merry, may I say confound?
MERRY.
Ay, that you may.
KEMPTHORN.
Well, then, with your permission, Confound the Pillory! MERRY.
That's the very thing The joiner said who made the Shrewsbury stocks.
He said, Confound the stocks, because they put him Into his own.

He was the first man in them.
KEMPTHORN.
For swearing, was it?
MERRY.
No, it was for charging; He charged the town too much; and so the town, To make things square, set him in his own stocks, And fined him five pounds sterling,--just enough To settle his own bill.
KEMPTHORN.
And served him right; But, Master Merry, is it not eight bells?
MERRY.
Not quite.
KEMPTHORN.
For, do you see?
I'm getting tired Of being perched aloft here in this cro' nest Like the first mate of a whaler, or a Middy Mast-headed, looking out for land! Sail ho! Here comes a heavy-laden merchant-man With the lee clews eased off and running free Before the wind.

A solid man of Boston.
A comfortable man, with dividends, And the first salmon, and the first green peas.
A gentleman passes.
He does not even turn his head to look.
He's gone without a word.

Here comes another, A different kind of craft on a taut bow-line,-- Deacon Giles Firmin the apothecary, A pious and a ponderous citizen, Looking as rubicund and round and splendid As the great bottle in his own shop window! DEACON FIRMIN passes.
And here's my host of the Three Mariners, My creditor and trusty taverner, My corporal in the Great Artillery! He's not a man to pass me without speaking.
COLE looks away and passes.
Don't yaw so; keep your luff, old hypocrite! Respectable, ah yes, respectable, You, with your seat in the new Meeting-house, Your cow-right on the Common! But who's this?
I did not know the Mary Ann was in! And yet this is my old friend, Captain Goldsmith, As sure as I stand in the bilboes here.
Why, Ralph, my boy! Enter RALPH GOLDSMITH.
GOLDSMITH.
Why, Simon, is it you?
Set in the bilboes?
KEMPTHORN.
Chock-a-block, you see, And without chafing-gear.
GOLDSMITH.
And what's it for?
KEMPTHORN.
Ask that starbowline with the boat-hook there, That handsome man.
MERRY (bowing).
For swearing.
KEMPTHORN.
In this town They put sea-captains in the stocks for swearing, And Quakers for not swearing.


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