Chocolate

Words: James Wadsworth (from "Chocolate; Or, An Indian Drinke," 1652)
Tune: April Grant

These verses come from a time when chocolate was taking off in Europe as the new sexy drink and dietary supplement. I've used only the punchiest verses and made small changes in the wording to feel more singable; attentive ears may also detect that I censored one word.

The full poem appears here, as the translator's note to Wadsworth's English version of an Italian book by Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma (1644) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/21271...

Lyrics:
Doctors, lay by your irksome books,
And all ye pettifogging rooks,
Leave quacking and enumerate
The virtues of our chocolate.

Let th' Universal Medicine
Made up of dead men's bones and skin
Be henceforth illegitimate
And yield to sovereign chocolate.

Nor need the women longer grieve
Who spend their oil, yet not conceive,
For 'tis a help immediate
If such but lick of chocolate.

'Twill make old women young and fresh,
Create new motions of the flesh,
And cause them long for you-know-what,
If they but taste of chocolate.

Both high and low, both rich and poor,
My lord, my lady, and my accountant,
With all the folks at Billingsgate,
Bow, bow your hams to chocolate.