No More Learning

Thou and thy house, like Noah's eight did rest,
Left by the war's flood, on the mountain's crest •,
And the large vale lay subject to thy will,
Which thou but as an husbandman, wouldst till ;
And only didst for others plant the vine
Of Liberty, not drunken with its wine.

That sober liberty which, men may have.
That they enjoy, but more they vainly crave ;
And such as to their parent's tents do press,
May show their own, not see his nakedness.

Yet such a clammish issue still doth rage,
The shame and plague both of the land and age,
Who watched thy halting, and thy fall divide,
Rejoicing when thy foot had slipped aside,
That their new king might the fifth sceptre

shake.
And make the world, by his example, quake ;
Whose frantic army, should they want for men,
Might muster heresies, so one were ten.
What thy misfortune, they the spirit call,
And their religion only is to fall.
Oh Mahomet ! now couldst thou rise again,
Thy Till )in«; -sickness should have made thee nign ;
While Fcak and Simpson would in many a toin**
Have Nvrit the comments of thy sacred foam :



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OF MAUVELL. 151

For soon thou might'st have passed among their

ranty
AVer't but for thine unmoved tulipant ;
As thou must needs have owned them of thy

band,
For prophecies fit to be alcoraned.

Accursed locusts, whom your king does spit
Out of the centre of the unbottomed pit ;
Wanderers, adulterers, liars, Muntzer*s rest,
Sorcerers, atheists, Jesuits, possest.
You, who the Scriptures and the laws deface.
With the same liberty as points and lace ;
O race ! most hypocritically strict,
Bent to reduce us to the ancient Pict,
Well may you act the Adam and the Eve,
Ay, and the serpent too, that did deceive.

But the great captain, now the danger's o*er,
Makes you, for his sake, tremble one fit more ;
And, to your spite, returning yet alive,
Does with himself, all that is good, revive.

So, when first man did through the morning dew.
See the bright sun his shining race pursue,
All day he followed, with unwearied sight.
Pleased with that other world of moving light ;
But thought him, M' hen he missed his setting

beams.
Sunk in the hills, or plunged below the strr. uiis,



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152 THE POEMS

While dismal blacks hung round the universe,
And stars, like tapers, burned upon his hearse ;
And owls and ravens with their screeching noise^
Did make their funerals sadder by their joys.
His weeping eyes the doleful vigils keep.
Not knowing yet the night was made for sleep.
Still to the west, where he him lost, he turned.
And with such accents, as despairing, mourned ;
*' Why did mine eyes once see so bright a ray ?
Or why day last no longer than a day ? '*
When straight the sun behind him he descried,
Smiling serenely from the further side.

So while our star that gives us light and heat.
Seemed now a long and gloomy night to threat.
Up from the other world his flame doth dart.
And princes, shining through their windows, start ;
Who their suspected counsellors refuse.
And credulous ambassadors accuse:
" Is this," saith one, " the nation that we read,
" Spent with both wars, under a captain dead !
" Yet rig a navy, while we dress us late,
" And ere we dine, rase and rebuild a state ?