Excuse me, then! you know my heart; But dearest friends, alas! must part.

The couplet voices a courteous but pained leave-taking: the speaker asks pardon (“Excuse me, then!”) while appealing to the listener’s intimate knowledge of his sincerity (“you know my heart”). The turn in the second line—“But dearest friends, alas! must part.”—acknowledges that even the closest bonds are subject to separation, whether by circumstance, duty, or mortality. In John Gay’s verse, such moments often balance social politeness with genuine feeling, using the neat closure of rhyme to contain an emotion that is, in fact, unsettled. The lines therefore dramatize the tension between public forms of farewell and private reluctance to let go.