STUMP

Are yet your eyelids open, are you yet Awaked out of the slumber you were in? Or will you still lie snorting in your sloth? Be still persuaded you are safe enough? Until the very instant, you do feel Their naked Swords glide through your weasond-pipes? Or do you think with belching P ffes that fly From your full paunches, you can blow them back? Or is the bottom of a deep carouse, Able to drown them? will their fury melt At the beholding of your dainty wives? Or can submission be a stickler In these hight braules? I tell you burghers no, Fair words will be as oil to burning pitch; And gold as Sulphur to enkindled; flames, Your daughters chastity must quench their lust; And your deer wives, their lawless arms: I said as much but would not be believed, Now tell me if I prophesied aright? Or that my zealous words deserved rebuke? Did I not say, the Crocodile did weep, But to obtain his pray? the Sea look smooth, But for a storm: would any thing be thought, By the close confluence of the Spanish troops Into the Castle, but some massacre? Yet was I rated to object as much, Reviled and baffled for my loyalty: Binds me my country with no greater bonds, Than for a groat to fight then for a groat, To be infeebled, or to lose a limb? Poor groatsworth of effection; Well, I'll learn To pay my debt and to measure my desert According to the rate: a groat I had, And so much as a groat amounts unto you, My sword shall pay you in exchange of blows. How now, two Soldiers ransacking a woman? Oh 'tis Champaigns wife that was the Governor, Here is she, that would not have been seen with a moath upon her, for a thousand pound; That spent as much on Monkeys, Dogs and Par ets, As would have kept ten Soldiers all the year. Zblood I have seen her, where I have passed by her In the streets, to stop her nose with her sweet gloves, For fear my smell should have infected her; And now I live to see her l g'd, and torn By lousy tottered rogues: Oh Antwerp, Antwerp, Now Madame Marchpaigne, minx, your Blows And you are one. Take that she has it is sufficient, But go no further, it is inhuman to abuse a woman. What should I do with it, can you tell? To have my throat cut for it, would: No, no your Sister Mince-pies groat Will do me no pleasure now. Where is it? not in Antwerp. Your closet will not serve your turn, You cannot walk to your garden-house. What stir is here? what discontented rumor Sends second message to my dull struck days, Accustomed to the screeching yell of death? Lady, what grievance? what is there to do? For Gods sake let me come plague the dog, I'll stone the Jew to death, and paint this Vault With the unhallowed blood of wicked treason: Here, wear this weighty Jewel in thy hat, The town hath sent it for a token slave; I bought this with the goat you gave me sir; Soldiers must loath despised dingratitude. This woman for her ransom sends you this; Give these two unto Charon for your passing. And with this last, present grim Belzebub. So sleep thy soul with princely Lucifer, And take such fare as treason will afford. Come Lady, thus you see good friends must partly, Lament not for his lose his time was come, And friends from friends, must either go or run. You are all Wallons, but in the miserablest case that ever poor slaves were in: for you see, that if any man hate a man, call him but Wallon, the Spaniards cut his throat, what countryman so ere he be What will you do then? here is my poor stump and I have stumbled through a thousand shot, & yet we halt together; there was never one poor piece of Timber has been so sindg'd as it has been: blood it has been four times a fire under me, and yet we scramble to gether trotting, trotting: You'll be starved every more the Son of ye, and worried with dogs, and yet you'll fly. Die Like men, what should we do, if there were any hope of safety but there is not, there is not. Yes, I'll halt before you, follow me as straight as you can They say the Spaniards and their whores are at dice upon the Change: I'll lay my wooden leg afore them, cast at it who will; but who stands there? A those Almains, those Almains, they cried live Spaniards: a vengeance take them, they were called high Almains, but they are low enough now; for a num ber of them are cut off by the waste: you may call them blanched Almains and you will, for their guts are blanched about their heals. Why bravely spoke, If you will take such partly then as we do, Help me to lead these straggling companies, And wee'll amongst their quarters ere we die. It is the Tallow-cake, the Rammish Fat, That would not give a penny to a Soldier, I know him well; now Sir how feel your self Your greasy paunch will not defend you then? You cannot satisfy them with a groat, But if I should requite thy vild contempt, Here should I leave thee, that as thy treasure Has been a pray to their devouring lust, So in this dunghill of thy carryon flesh, Their ravenous Swords might find a du tie feast, For nought but draff art thou composed of. Nor fit for any thing but to feed worms, Yet thou shalt find a difference betwixt my thoughts And the base temper of thy muddy mind: Go live, if thou canst escape their bloody hands, Till want and beggary cut short thy days. Guts, trouble me no more. What, but to hunt the footsteps of pale death, Until we rouse him in his sooty cave, There, will no prospect of our Countries fallen, Offend our eyesight; there no treachery Of haughty Spaniards tread a bloody March; Nor any base objection of ingrate, And thankless Citizens fit in our doors: But we shall quietly enjoy the peace, For which we breath; there shall we be secure, There free from thought of this world's misery, And there indeed find true felicity: For there our travel shall be recompensed, Our love requited, and our wounds repaid With double merit. Haste then unto the place, Upon the earth is nothing but disgrace. See Captain, now I have it on my breast, The Honourable cognisance of death, This purple river, from this weeping fount, More glads and quickens my decayed spirit, Than ever christ all spring in heat of Summer: The weary traveller, his strength revives, To draw out tedious hours still on earth, But mine does flourish to possess, anon The blessed haven of eternity. Let me embrace this sweet affinity, Like in our lives agreeing in our death's: But what do I behold? thine eyelids faint, And the warm touch of thy desired cheek, Begins to freeze; wilt thou anticipate Those joys before me? gentle Captain slay, There's but a minute that divides our Hope's: O he is dead, may his departing soul, Usher my spirit above those fleeting clouds: Death, why delayest thou? set thy lazy hand To the divorcement of my loathed flesh. I am prepared, my penitent sad thoughts, Have long ago washed my contagious sin: The blood that I have spilled (the Massacres Procured and practised by this hand of mine) Heaven lay not to my charge; for though my sword Was never drawn but in a rightful cause, Yet much misprision hath attended it; That, and all else, this sighs craves pardon for, Mine eyes were never accustomed to tears, Let it suffice, these wounds do weep for them: Antwerp farewell, if thou have done me wrong, This latest gasp, sends pardon from my tongue. You tottered shake-raged rogues, what domi near you? If Dalvas self were here, he should not do it. The Dutch on the other side, they hate you worse then Devils, because the Spaniards entered where you kept the Trenches. Captain. your life's in as great danger now as ere it was, The Spaniard is as cruel in cold blood as ere he was; Oh Captain, Captain, where is Antwerp now? It my native place, where should I then be free, If made a sl we, where I was freely born? Ther's not a town almost in Brabant now, That gives a man the safet of a night: What should we then do living: Have you and I seen that, that we have seen, And come to this? If you reserve the courage you were wont, Of a brave Soldier and a Gentleman, Let's do something yet worthy the talking of, I have won a company of poor hurt Soldiers, Yet able to weld weapons and to fight. Why then come lads; why this is resolved Like men, If we must go, wee'll go together then. Hence tumbrel from my sighed, when bou ̄ ty might Have calmed my sharp affliction then thy hand Was fast clos worser up; but now it is too late, Thou wouldst seem prodigal, away base churl. You have another groat to give me then, I know your liberal minds will scorn t'impose, The sweat of bloody danger on the brow Of any man, but you'll reward him for it: He shall atleast (when he hath lost his limbs) Be sent for harbour to a spittle-house. How say ye, shall he not? Good reason then, But we should venture; yes, to laugh at you, While we behold the Spaniard cut your throats: And object base set awork; A sweaty Cobbler, whose best industry, Is but to clout a Shoe, shall have his fee; But let a Soldier, that hath spent his blood, Is lame'd, , or any way distressed, Appeal for suc our, then you look a sconce As if you knew him not; respecting more And Ostler, or some drudge that rakes your kennels, Than one that fights for the common wealth. Well, follow me, I'll do the best I can. No rogue Sir, but a Soldier as you are, And have had one leg more then I have now. Sir, here's my Passport, I have known the wars, And have had the vantage of as fair a spoil as you have here. Hark you hark you, whither will you fly? I would know that; sbloud whither? whither? would; where will you be relieved? there's not a town dare receive you: the Spaniard has all the country; you cannot straggle a foot out of the walls, but your throats are cut; what have you to carry with you, but your scurvy notched limbs? you damned rogues, whither will you go, to feed Wolves? A you whoreson rascals; and though these villanos Burr gers have (by their own security been the destruction of the City, a pox on them: yet it will be laid to our charge, because we were in it. What news quoth our Captain! where have you been? Well, have seen the day Captain, you rather been a c ting throats, then at a Mass, was not de ion drove you to the place: so Captain, Captain, the world is turned: do you remember the groat they off read me, when you came to train Soldiers? would, give him a groat? would, would, I have since that seen their Mistress's by a lousy Lackey, as naked as a new shaved Water-dog: & Lord why went you to the Fryery? why to the Fryerie? How nimbly death bestirs him every where, And I that am a weary of my life, And would feign die I cannot, Death is so proud he will not look on me, These muddy rogues that hoarded up their coin, Now have their throats cut for the coin they have: They that for two pence would have seen me starve, And still my old rotten stump and I, Trot up and down as long as we can wag. Had these grey hairs retained the reverent worth Of graven experience, as they might have done; And had you been more rich in inward gifts, And less magnificent in outward show, Then had you lived, to die a natural death: And you to see some of his honoured years. But pride and luxury, have ever been, The gate of misery, and nurse of sin: Yet though you me contemned, I grieve your fallen, And will in pity, give you burial. Yet is not Antwerp quite bereft of life, So long as we two breath, to stand for her, Nor shall her ransack pass, without some right Of joust revenge: witness this last assault, Wherein the Scales of Justice have been filled, With (at the least) a hundred Spaniards lives, That thought their victory to be secure. But who are these? a Burger, and with him His tender daughter, having both sustained The heavy stroke of death?