What Adam dream'd of when his bride

Came from her closet in his side;

In proper terms, such as men smatter,

When they throw out and miss the matter.

For his religion, it was fit

Call fire, and sword, and desolation,
A godly thorough reformation,
Which always must be carry'd on,
And still be doing, never done;
As if religion were intended

For nothing else but to be mended.
A sect whose chief devotion lies
In odd perverse antipathies:
In falling out with that or this,
And finding somewhat still amiss;

205

210

More peevish, cross, and splenetic,

Than dog distract or monkey sick;
That with more care keep holiday

The wrong, than others the right way :
Compound for sins they are inclin'd to,

By damning those they have no mind to;

Still so perverse and opposite,

As if they worshipp'd God for spite.
The self-same thing they will abhor

One way, and long another for:
Free-will they one way disavow,
Another, nothing else allow.
All piety consists therein

In them, in other men all sin.

215

220

225

Rather than fail, they will defy

That which they love most tenderly;

Quarrel with minc'd pies, and disparage

Their best and dearest friend, plumb-porridge; Fat pig and goose itself oppose,

We mean on the inside, not the outward.

A sudden view it would beguile :

The upper part thereof was whey,
The nether orange mix'd with grey.
This hairy meteor did denounce
The fall of sceptres and of crowns:

245

With grisly type did represent

pun.

Declining age of government;
And tell with hieroglyphic spade, ?

Its own grave and the state's were made.
Like Samson's heart-breakers, it grew

In time to make a nation rue;

250

Though it contributed its own fall,

255

To wait upon the public downfal.

It was monastic, and did grow
In holy orders by strict vow;

Of rule as sullen and severe,

As that of rigid Cordeliere:
'Twas bound to suffer persecution,
And martyrdom with resolution;

ייד

oppose itself against the hate

And vengeance of th' incensed state:
In whose defiance it was worn,
Still ready to be pull'd and torn,\
With red-hot irons to be tortur'd,
Revil'd, and spit upon, and martyr'd;
Maugre all which, 'twas to stand fast,
As long as monarchy should last;

But when the state should hap to reel,
'Twas to submit to fatal steel,

And fall, as it was consecrate,

A sacrifice to fall of state;

Whose thread of life the fatal sisters

275

Did twist together with its whiskers,

And twine so close, that time should never,

In life or death, their fortunes sever;

But with his rusty sickle mow

Both down together at a blow.

So learned Taliacotius, from

The brawny part of porter's bum,
Cut supplemental noses, which

Would last as long as parent breech:

280

But when the date of Nock was out, Noh 285

Off dropt the sympathetic snout.

[Oliver Cromwell

His back, or rather burden, show'd,

As if it stoop'd with its own load.

For as Æneas bore his sire

Upon his shoulders through the fire ;
Our Knight did bear no less a pack
Of his own buttocks on his back;
Which now had almost got the upper
Hand of his head, for want of crupper.

To poise this equally, he bore

A paunch of the same bulk before;

290

295