Quarrel with minced pies, and disparage
Their best and dearest friend, plum-porridge;
Fat pig and goose itself oppose,
And blaspheme custard through the nose. 230
Th' apostles of this fierce religion,
Like Mahomet's, were ass and widgeon,[1]
To whom our knight, by fast instinct
Of wit and temper, was so linkt,
As if hypocrisy and nonsense 235
Had got th' advowson of his conscience.[2]
Thus was he gifted and accouter'd.
We mean on th' inside, not the outward:
That next of all we shall discuss;
Then listen, Sirs, it followeth thus: 240
His tawny beard was th' equal grace
Both of his wisdom and his face;
In cut and dye so like a tile.[3]
A sudden view it would beguile;
The upper part thereof was whey, 245
The nether orange, mixt with grey.
This hairy meteor did denounce
The fall of sceptres and of crowns;[4]
With grisly type did represent
Declining age of government. 250
- ↑ The Ass is the milk-white beast called Alborach, which Mahomet tells us, in the Koran, the angel Gabriel brought to carry him to the presence of God. Alborach refused to let him get up, unless he would promise to procure him an entrance into paradise. Widgeon means the pigeon, which Mahomet taught to eat out of his ear, that it might be thought to be the means of divine communication. Our poet calls it a widgeon, for the sake of equivoque: widgeon, in the figurative sense, signifying a foolish silly fellow.
- ↑ Dr Bruno Ryves, in his Mercurius Rusticus, gives a remarkable instance of a fanatical conscience, in a captain, who was invited by a soldier to eat part of a goose with him, but refused, because he said it was stolen; but being to march away, he, who would eat no stolen goose, made no scruple to ride away upon a stolen mare.
- ↑ In the time of Charles I., the beard was worn sharply peaked in a triangular form, like the old English tiles. Some had pasteboard cases to put over their beards in the night, lest they should get rumpled during their sleep.
- ↑ As a comet is supposed to portend some public calamity, so this parliamentary beard threatened monarchy.
