Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/112

O glorious and heroic constancy!
That can forswear upon the cart, and die
With gasping souls expiring in a lie.
None but tame sheepish criminals repent,
Who fear the idle bugbear, punishment:
Your gallant sinner scorns that cowardice,
The poor regret of having done amiss;
Brave he, to his first principles still true,
Can face damnation, sin with hell in view,
And bid it take the soul he does bequeath,
And blow it thither with his dying breath.
Dare such as these profess religion's name?
Who, should they own 't, and be believed, would shame
It's practice out of the world, would atheists make
Firm in their creed, and vouch it at the stake?
Is heaven for such, whose deeds make hell too good,
Too mild a penance for their cursè brood?
For whose unheard of crimes, and damnèd sake,
Fate must below new sorts of torture make,
Since, when of old it framed that place of doom,
'Twas thought no guilt, like this, could thither come.
Base recreant souls ! would you have kings trust you,
Who never yet kept your allegiance true
To any but hell's prince? who with more ease
Can swallow down most solemn perjuries,
Than a town-bully common oaths and lies?
Are the French Harry's fates so soon forgot?
Our last best Tudor? or the powder-plot?
And those fine streamers that adorned so long
The bridge, and Westminster, and yet had hung,
Were they not stolen, and now for relics gone?
Think Tories loyal, or Scotch Covenanters;
Bobbed tigers gentle; courteous, fasting bears;
Atheists devout, and thrice wracked mariners;
Take goats for chaste and cloistered marmosites;
For plain and open, two-edged parasites;
Believe bawds modest, and the shameless stews;
And binding drunkards' oaths, and strumpets’ vows;