CANTO II.]
HUDIBRAS.
391
But now, alas! they're all expir'd,
And th' House, as well as members, fir'd;
Consum'd in kennels by the rout,
With which they other fires put out;
Condemn'd t' ungoverning distress, 1635
And paltry private wretchedness;
Worse than the devil to privation,
Beyond all hopes of restoration;
And parted, like the body and soul,
From all dominion and control. 1640
We, who could lately, with a look,
Enact, establish, or revoke,
Whose arbitrary nods gave law,
And frowns kept multitudes in awe;
Before the bluster of whose huff, 1645
All hats, as in a storm, flew off;
Ador'd and bow'd to by the great,
Down to the footman and valet;
Had more bent knees than chapel mats,
And prayers than the crowns of hats, 1650
Shall now be scorn'd as wretchedly:
For ruin's just as low as high;
Which might be suffer'd, were it all
The horror that attends our fall:
For some of us have scores more large 1655
Than heads and quarters can discharge[1]
And others, who, by restless scraping,
With public frauds, and private rapine,
Have mighty heaps of wealth amass'd,
Would gladly lay down all at last; 1660
And, to be but undone, entail
Their vessels on perpetual jail,[2]
And th' House, as well as members, fir'd;
Consum'd in kennels by the rout,
With which they other fires put out;
Condemn'd t' ungoverning distress, 1635
And paltry private wretchedness;
Worse than the devil to privation,
Beyond all hopes of restoration;
And parted, like the body and soul,
From all dominion and control. 1640
We, who could lately, with a look,
Enact, establish, or revoke,
Whose arbitrary nods gave law,
And frowns kept multitudes in awe;
Before the bluster of whose huff, 1645
All hats, as in a storm, flew off;
Ador'd and bow'd to by the great,
Down to the footman and valet;
Had more bent knees than chapel mats,
And prayers than the crowns of hats, 1650
Shall now be scorn'd as wretchedly:
For ruin's just as low as high;
Which might be suffer'd, were it all
The horror that attends our fall:
For some of us have scores more large 1655
Than heads and quarters can discharge[1]
And others, who, by restless scraping,
With public frauds, and private rapine,
Have mighty heaps of wealth amass'd,
Would gladly lay down all at last; 1660
And, to be but undone, entail
Their vessels on perpetual jail,[2]
- ↑ Alluding to the common punishments of high treason; noblemen being beheaded, and others hung, drawn, and quartered.
- ↑ This commutation was accepted by some of the Regicides at the Restoration.
years dead, and rotten under ground, to any man's thinking, that the ghosts of some of the members thereof have transmigrated into other parliaments, and some into those parts from whence there is no redemption, should, nevertheless, at two several and respective resurrections start up, like the dragon's teeth that were sown, into living, natural, and carnal members. And hence it is, I suppose, that the physicians and anatomists call this bone os sacrum, or the holy bone."
