Gargantua and Pantagruel eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,126 pages of information about Gargantua and Pantagruel.

Gargantua and Pantagruel eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,126 pages of information about Gargantua and Pantagruel.

Here enter not attorneys, barristers,
Nor bridle-champing law-practitioners: 
Clerks, commissaries, scribes, nor pharisees,
Wilful disturbers of the people’s ease: 
Judges, destroyers, with an unjust breath,
Of honest men, like dogs, even unto death. 
Your salary is at the gibbet-foot: 
Go drink there! for we do not here fly out
On those excessive courses, which may draw
A waiting on your courts by suits in law.

  Lawsuits, debates, and wrangling
  Hence are exiled, and jangling. 
    Here we are very
    Frolic and merry,
  And free from all entangling,
  Lawsuits, debates, and wrangling.

Here enter not base pinching usurers,
Pelf-lickers, everlasting gatherers,
Gold-graspers, coin-gripers, gulpers of mists,
Niggish deformed sots, who, though your chests
Vast sums of money should to you afford,
Would ne’ertheless add more unto that hoard,
And yet not be content,—­you clunchfist dastards,
Insatiable fiends, and Pluto’s bastards,
Greedy devourers, chichy sneakbill rogues,
Hell-mastiffs gnaw your bones, you ravenous dogs.

  You beastly-looking fellows,
  Reason doth plainly tell us
    That we should not
    To you allot
  Room here, but at the gallows,
  You beastly-looking fellows.

Here enter not fond makers of demurs
In love adventures, peevish, jealous curs,
Sad pensive dotards, raisers of garboils,
Hags, goblins, ghosts, firebrands of household broils,
Nor drunkards, liars, cowards, cheaters, clowns,
Thieves, cannibals, faces o’ercast with frowns,
Nor lazy slugs, envious, covetous,
Nor blockish, cruel, nor too credulous,—­
Here mangy, pocky folks shall have no place,
No ugly lusks, nor persons of disgrace.

  Grace, honour, praise, delight,
  Here sojourn day and night. 
    Sound bodies lined
    With a good mind,
  Do here pursue with might
  Grace, honour, praise, delight.

Here enter you, and welcome from our hearts,
All noble sparks, endowed with gallant parts. 
This is the glorious place, which bravely shall
Afford wherewith to entertain you all. 
Were you a thousand, here you shall not want
For anything; for what you’ll ask we’ll grant. 
Stay here, you lively, jovial, handsome, brisk,
Gay, witty, frolic, cheerful, merry, frisk,
Spruce, jocund, courteous, furtherers of trades,
And, in a word, all worthy gentle blades.

  Blades of heroic breasts
  Shall taste here of the feasts,
    Both privily
    And civilly
  Of the celestial guests,
  Blades of heroic breasts.

Here enter you, pure, honest, faithful, true
Expounders of the Scriptures old and new. 
Whose glosses do not blind our reason, but
Make it to see the clearer, and who shut
Its passages from hatred, avarice,
Pride, factions, covenants, and all sort of vice. 
Come, settle here a charitable faith,
Which neighbourly affection nourisheth. 
And whose light chaseth all corrupters hence,
Of the blest word, from the aforesaid sense.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Gargantua and Pantagruel from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.