No More Learning

Amid her ladies walks the papist queen,
As if her nice feet scorned our English earth.
The Canaanitish Jezebel! I would be
A dog if I might tear her with my teeth! _70
There's old Sir Henry Vane, the Earl of Pembroke,
Lord Essex, and Lord Keeper Coventry,
And others who make base their English breed
By vile participation of their honours
With papists, atheists, tyrants, and apostates. _75
When lawyers masque 'tis time for honest men
To strip the vizor from their purposes.
A seasonable time for masquers this!
When Englishmen and Protestants should sit
dust on their dishonoured heads _80
To avert the wrath of Him whose scourge is felt
For the great sins which have drawn down from Heaven
and foreign overthrow.
The remnant of the martyred saints in Rochefort
Have been abandoned by their faithless allies _85
To that idolatrous and adulterous torturer
Lewis of France,--the Palatinate is lost--
[ENTER LEIGHTON (WHO HAS BEEN BRANDED IN THE FACE) AND BASTWICK. ]
Canst thou be--art thou?

NOTE:
_73 make 1824; made 1839.

LEIGHTON:
I WAS Leighton: what
I AM thou seest. And yet turn thine eyes,
And with thy memory look on thy friend's mind, _90
Which is unchanged, and where is written deep
The sentence of my judge.

THIRD CITIZEN:
Are these the marks with which
Laud thinks to improve the image of his Maker
Stamped on the face of man? Curses upon him,
The impious tyrant!

SECOND CITIZEN:
It is said besides _95
That lewd and papist drunkards may profane
The Sabbath with their
And has permitted that most heathenish custom
Of dancing round a pole dressed up with wreaths
On May-day.
_100
A man who thus twice crucifies his God
May well . . . his brother. --In my mind, friend,
The root of all this ill is prelacy.
I would cut up the root.

THIRD CITIZEN:
And by what means?

SECOND CITIZEN:
Smiting each Bishop under the fifth rib. _105

THIRD CITIZEN:
You seem to know the vulnerable place
Of these same crocodiles.

SECOND CITIZEN:
I learnt it in
Egyptian bondage, sir. Your worm of Nile
Betrays not with its flattering tears like they;
For, when they cannot kill, they whine and weep. _110
Nor is it half so greedy of men's bodies
As they of soul and all; nor does it wallow
In slime as they in simony and lies
And close lusts of the flesh.

NOTE:
_78-_114 A seasonable. . . of the flesh 1870; omitted 1824.