Now of beards there be such company,
    And fashions such a throng,
  That it is very hard to handle a beard,
    Tho’ it be never so long.

  The Roman T, in its bravery,
    Both first itself disclose,
  But so high it turns, that oft it burns
    With the flames of a torrid nose.

  The stiletto-beard, oh, it makes me afear’d,
    It is so sharp beneath,
  For he that doth place a dagger in ’s face,
    What wears he in his sheath?

  But, methinks, I do itch to go thro’ the stitch
    The needle-beard to amend,
  Which, without any wrong, I may call too long,
    For a man can see no end.

  The soldier’s beard doth march in shear’d,
    In figure like a spade,
  With which he’ll make his enemies quake,
    And think their graves are made.

* * * * *

  What doth invest a bishop’s breast,
    But a milk-white spreading hair? 
  Which an emblem may be of integrity
    Which doth inhabit there.

* * * * *

  But oh, let us tarry for the beard of King Harry,
    That grows about the chin,
  With his bushy pride, and a grove on each side,
    And a champion ground between.

“Barnes in the defence of the Berde” is another curious piece of verse, or rather of arrant doggrel, printed in the 16th century.  It is addressed to Andrew Borde, the learned and facetious physician, in the time of Henry VIII, who seems to have written a tract against the wearing of beards, of which nothing is now known.  In the second part Barnes (whoever he was) says: 

But, syr, I praye you, yf you tell can,
Declare to me, when God made man,
(I meane by our forefather Adam)
Whyther he had a berde than;
And yf he had, who dyd hym shave,
Syth that a barber he coulde not have. 
Well, then, ye prove hym there a knave,
Bicause his berde he dyd so save: 

                                I fere it not.

* * * * *

Sampson, with many thousandes more
Of auncient phylosophers (!), full great store,
Wolde not be shaven, to dye therefore;
Why shulde you, then, repyne so sore? 
Admit that men doth imytate
Thynges of antyquite, and noble state,
Such counterfeat thinges oftymes do mytygate
Moche ernest yre and debate: 

                              I fere it not.

Therefore, to cease, I thinke be best;
For berdyd men wolde lyve in rest. 
You prove yourselfe a homly gest,
So folysshely to rayle and jest;
For if I wolde go make in ryme,
How new shavyd men loke lyke scraped swyne,
And so rayle forth, from tyme to tyme,
A knavysshe laude then shulde be myne: 

                              I fere it not.

What should this avail him? he asks; and so let us all be good friends, bearded and unbearded.[166]