C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Songs and Their Settings: Iago’s Soldier-Songs
By William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
From ‘Othello’
A
And let me the canakin clink:
A soldier’s a man;
A life’s but a span:
Why then let a soldier drink.
His breeches cost him but a crown;
He held them sixpence all too dear,
With that he called the tailor—lown.
He was a wight of high renown,
And thou art but of low degree:
’Tis pride that pulls the country down,
Then take thine auld cloak about thee.