194 ONE THOUSAND FAMOUS THINGS
To make thy bonds advisedly.
And come not bound through suerty.
To meddle not with usury,
Nor lend thy money foolishly.
To hate to live in infamy,
Through craft and living shiftingly.
To shun all kind of treachery,
For treason endeth horribly.
To learn to shun ill company,
And such as live dishonestly.
To banish house of blasphemy.
Lest crosses cross, unluckily.
To stop mischance through policy,
For chancing too unhappily.
To bear thy crosses patiently,
For worldly things are slippery.
To lay to keep from misery.
Age coming on, so creepingly.
To pray to God continually,
For aid against thine enemy.
To spend thy Sabbath holily,
And help the needy poverty.
To live in conscience quietly,
And keep thyself from malady..
To ease thy sickness speedily,
Ere help be past recovery.
To seek to God for remedy,
For witches prove unluckily.
These be the steps, unfeignedly,
To climb to thrift by husbandry,
From Thomas Tusser's book of good counsel to
countrymen and housewives of the Sixteenth Century
Sad News
MY lord, what can I say to you ? I am sore vexed, but your
pretty cottage is burnt to the ground. What will you say,
my lord ? The Housekeeper to Lord Grey ofFallodon
If I Should Die Tonight
IF I should die tonight,
My friends would look upon my quiet face
Before they laid it in its resting place,
And deem that death had left it almost fair;
And, laying snow-white flowers against my hair,
Would smooth it down with tearful tenderness,
And fold my hands with lingering caress,
Poor hands, so empty and so cold tonight I