Stand off my Masters: 'Tis your pence apeece

Stand off my Masters: ’Tis your pence apeece,

Jason, Medea, and the Golden Fleece;

What side the line good Sir? Tigris, or Po?

Lybia? Japan? Whisk? or Tradinktido?

St. Kits? St. Omer? or St. Margaret’s Bay?

Presto begon? or come aloft? what way?

Doublets? or Knap? the Cog? low Dice? or high?

By all the hard names in the Letany,

Bell, Book and Candle, and the Pope’s great toe

I conjure thy account: Devil say no.

Nay, since I must untruss, Gallants look to’t,

Keep your prodigious distance forty foot,

This is that Beast of eyes in th’ Revelations,

The Basilisk has twisted up three Nations.

Ponteus Hixius doxius, full of tricks,

The Lottery of the vulgar lunaticks.

The Knapsack of the State, the thing you wish,

Magog and Gog stew’d in a Chaffendish

A bag of Spoons and Whistles, wherein men

May whistle when they see their Plate agen.

Thus far his Infancy: his riper age

Requires a more mysterious Folio page.

Now that time speaks him perfect, and ’tis pity

To dandle him longer in a close Committee,

The Elf dares peep abroad, the pretty Fool

Can wag without a truckling standing-stool;

Revenge his Mother’s infamy, and swear

Hee’s the fair Off-spring of one half-score year;

The Heir of the House and hopes, the cry

And wonder of the Peoples misery.

’Tis true, while as a Puppy it could play

For Thimbles, any thing to passe the day;

But now the Cub can count, arithmetize,

Clink Masenello with the Duke of Guise;

Sign for an Irish purchase, and traduce

The Synod from their Doctrine to their Use;

Give its Dam suck, and a hidden way

Drinks up arrears a tergo mantica.

An everlasting Bale, Hell in Trunk-hose,

Uncased, the Divel’s Don Quixot in prose.

The Beast and the false Prophet twin’d together,

The squint-eyed emblem of all sorts of weather.

The refuse of that Chaos of the earth,

Able to give the World a second birth.

Affrick avaunt! Thy trifling Monsters glance

But Sheeps-eyed to this Penal Ignorance.

That all the Prodigies brought forth before

Are but Dame Natures blush left on the score.

This strings the Baker’s dozen, christens all

The cross-leg’d hours of time since Adam’s, fall.

The Publick Faith? why ’tis a word of kin,

A Nephew that dares Cozen any sin.

A Term of Art, great Bohemoth’s. younger Brother,

Old Machiavel, and half a thousand other.

Which when subscrib’d writes Legion, names on truss,

Abaddon, Belzebub, and Incubus,

All the Vice-Royes of darkness, every spell

And Fiend wrap’d in a short Trissillable.

But I fore-stall the Show. Enter and see,

Salute the Door, your Exit shall be free.

In brief ’tis call’d Religions ease, or loss;

For no one’s suffer’d here to bear his crosse.