What will you say when the world is dying?
What, when the last wild midnight falls
Dark, too dark for the bat to be flying
Round the ruins of old St. Paul's?
What will be last of the lights to perish?
What but the little red ring we knew,
Lighting the hands and the hearts that cherish
A fire, a fire, and a friend or two!

_Chorus:_ Up now, answer me, tell me true!
What will be last of the stars to perish?
--The fire that lighteth a friend or two!

III

Up now, answer me, on your mettle
Wisest man of the Mermaid Inn,
Soberest man on the old black settle,
Out with the truth! It was never a sin.--
Well, if God saved me alone of the seven,
Telling me _you_ must be damned, or _you_,
"This," I would say, "This is hell, not heaven!
Give me the fire and a friend or two!"

_Chorus:_ Steel was never so ringing true:
"God," we would say, "this is hell, not heaven!
Give us the fire, and a friend or two!"

III

BLACK BILL'S HONEY-MOON

The garlands of a Whitsun ale were strewn
About our rushes, the night that Raleigh brought
Bacon to sup with us. There, on that night,
I saw the singer of the _Faerie Queen_
Quietly spreading out his latest cantos
For Shakespeare's eye, like white sheets in the sun.
Marlowe, our morning-star, and Michael Drayton
Talked in that ingle-nook. And Ben was there,
Humming a song upon that old black settle:
"Or leave a kiss but in the cup
And I'll not ask for wine."
But, meanwhile, he drank malmsey.
Francis Bacon
Straddled before the fire; and, all at once,
He said to Shakespeare, in a voice that gripped
The Mermaid Tavern like an arctic frost:

"_There are no poets in this age of ours,
Not to compare with Plautus. They are all
Dead, the men that were famous in old days._"
"Why--so they are," said Will. The humming stopped.
I saw poor Spenser, a shy gentle soul,
With haunted eyes like starlit forest pools,
Smuggling his cantos under his cloak again.
"There's verse enough, no doubt," Bacon went on,
"But English is no language for the Muse.
Whom would you call our best? There's Gabriel Harvey,
And Edw