No More Learning

WOOL-CHURCH.

To cuckold a scrivener, mine is in masquerade ;
For on such occasions he oft steals away,
And returns to remount me about break of day.
In very dark nights sometimes you may find him,
With a harlot got up on my crupper behind him.

CHARING.

Pause brother awhile, and calmly consider
What thou hast to say against my royal rider.

WOOL-CHURCH.

Thy priest-ridden king turned desperate fighter
For the surplice, lawn-sleeves, the cross, and the

mitre ;
Till at last on the scaffold he was left in the

lurch.
By knaves, who cried up themselves for the

church,
Archbishops and bishops, archdeacons and deans.

CHARING.

Thy king will ne*er fight unless for his queans.

WOOL-CHURCH.

He that dies for ceremonies, dies like a fool.



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266 THE POEMS

CHARING.

The king on thy back is a lamentable tool.

WOOL-CHURCH.
The goat and the lion I equally hate,
And freemen alike value life and estate ;
Though the father and son be different rods,
Between the two scourgers we find little odds ;
Both infamous stand in three kingdoms' votes,
This for picking our pockets, that for cutting our
throats.

CHARINO.

More tolerable are the lion-king's slaughters.
Than the goat making whores of our wives and

our daughters :
The debauched and cruel since they equally

gall us,
I had rather bear Nero than Sardanapalus.

WOOL-CHURCH.

One of the two tyrants must still be our case.
Under all who shall reign of the false Stuart's

race.
DeWitt and Cromwell had each a brave soul,
I freely declare it, I am for old Noll ;
Though his goverament did a tyrant resemble,
He made England great, and his enemies

tremble.



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OP MARVELL. 267



CHARING.

Thy rider puts no man to death in his wrath,
But is buried alive in lust and in sloth.

WOOL-CHURCH.

What is thy opinion of James, Duke of York ?

CHARING.

The same that the frogs had of Jupiter's stork.
With the Turk in his head, and the Pope in his

heart.