parts, if you take not the better heed.  Actors, you rogues, come away; clear your throats, blow your noses, and wipe your mouths ere you enter, that you may take no occasion to spit or to cough, when you are non plus.  And this I bar, over and besides, that none of you stroke your beards to make action, play with your cod-piece points, or stand fumbling on your buttons, when you know not how to bestow your fingers.  Serve God, and act cleanly.  A fit of mirth and an old song first, if you will.

    Enter SUMMER, leaning on AUTUMN’S and WINTER’S
    shoulders, and attended on with a train of Satyrs and
    Wood-nymphs, singing.[22]

Fair Summer droops, droop men and beasts therefore,
So fair a summer look for never more: 
All good things vanish less than in a day,
Peace, plenty, pleasure, suddenly decay. 
  Go not yet away, bright soul of the sad year,
  The earth is hell when thou, leav’st to appear.

What! shall those flowers that deck’d thy garland erst,
Upon thy grave be wastefully dispersed? 
O trees, consume your sap in sorrow’s source,
Streams turn to tears your tributary course. 
  Go not yet hence, bright soul of the sad year,
  The earth is hell when thou leav’st to appear.

    [The Satyrs and Wood-nymphs go out singing, and leave_
    SUMMER and WINTER and AUTUMN on the stage.

WILL SUM.  A couple of pretty boys, if they would wash their faces, and were well breech’d[23] in an hour or two.  The rest of the green men have reasonable voices, good to sing catches or the great Jowben by the fire’s side in a winter’s evening.  But let us hear what Summer can say for himself, why he should not be hiss’d at.

SUM.  What pleasure always lasts? no joy endures: 
Summer I am; I am not what I was;
Harvest and age have whiten’d my green head;
On Autumn now and Winter I must lean. 
Needs must he fall, whom none but foes uphold,
Thus must the happiest man have his black day.
Omnibus una manet nox, et calcanda semel via lethi.[24]
This month have I lain languishing a-bed,
Looking each hour to yield my life and throne;
And died I had indeed unto the earth,
But that Eliza, England’s beauteous Queen,
On whom all seasons prosperously attend,
Forbad the execution of my fate,
Until her joyful progress was expir’d.[25]
For her doth Summer live, and linger here,
And wisheth long to live to her content: 
But wishes are not had, when they wish well: 
I must depart, my death-day is set down;
To these two must I leave my wheaten crown. 
So unto unthrifts rich men leave their lands,
Who in an hour consume long labour’s gains. 
True is it that divinest Sidney sung,
0, he is marr’d, that is for others made. 
Come near, my friends, for I am near my end. 
In presence of this honourable train,