W. Charon! thou slave! thou fooll! thou cavaleer!<81.1>
CHA. A slave! a fool! what traitor's voice I hear?
W. Come bring thy boat. CH. No, sir. W. No! sirrah, why?
CHA. The blest will disagree, and fiends will mutiny
At thy, at thy [un]numbred treachery.
W. Villain, I have a pass which who disdains,
I will sequester the Elizian plains.
CHA. Woes me, ye gentle shades! where shall I dwell?
He's come! It is not safe to be in hell.
CHORUS.
Thus man, his honor lost, falls on these shelves;
Furies and fiends are still true to themselves.
CHA. You must, lost fool, come in. W. Oh, let me in!
But now I fear thy boat will sink with my ore-weighty sin.
Where, courteous Charon, am I now? CHA. Vile rant!<81.2>
At the gates of thy supreme Judge Rhadamant.
DOUBLE CHORUS OF DIVELS.
Welcome to rape, to theft, to perjurie,
To all the ills thou wert, we canot hope to be;
Oh, pitty us condemned! Oh, cease to wooe,
And softly, softly breath, least you infect us too.
<81.1> This word is used here merely to denote a GALLANT,
a FELLOW. From being in its primitive sense a most honourable
appellation, it became, during and after the civil war between
Charles and the Parliament, a term of equivocal import.
<81.2> Here equivalent to RANTER, and used for the sake of the
metre.