There let ’em sit and fight it out,
Or scold till they are friends;
Or, what is better much than both,
Till I am made amends.
Ralph, quoth the knight, that’s well advised,
Let them both hither go,
And you and the sub-magistrate
Take care that it be so.
Let them be lock’d in face to face,
Bare buttocks on the ground;
And let them in that posture sit
Till they with us compound.
Thus fixt, well leave them for a time,
Whilst we with grief relate,
How at a wake this knight and squire
Got each a broken pate.
THE GENEVA BALLAD.
From Samuel Butler’s Posthumous Works.
Of all the factions in the town
Moved by French springs or Flemish wheels,
None turns religion upside down,
Or tears pretences out at heels,
Like Splaymouth with his brace of caps,
Whose conscience might be scann’d perhaps
By the dimensions of his chaps;
He whom the sisters do adore,
Counting his actions all divine,
Who when the spirit hints can roar,
And, if occasion serves, can whine;
Nay, he can bellow, bray, or bark;
Was ever sike a Beauk-learn’d clerk
That speaks all linguas of the ark?
To draw the hornets in like bees,
With pleasing twangs he tones his prose;
He gives his handkerchief a squeeze,
And draws John Calvin thro’ his nose;
Motive on motive he obtrudes,
With slip-stocking similitudes,
Eight uses more, and so concludes.
When monarchy began to bleed,
And treason had a fine new name;
When Thames was balderdash’d with Tweed,
And pulpits did like beacons flame;
When Jeroboam’s calves were rear’d,
And Laud was neither loved nor fear’d,
This gospel-comet first appear’d.