Will soon prove soft, and pliant to your use,
As strumpets on the carnival let loose.
Credit experience; I have tried them all,
And never found the unerring methods fail
Not Ovid, though 'twere his chief mastery,
Had greater skill in these intrigues than I;
Nor Nero's learnèd pimp, to whom we owe
What choice records of lust are extant now.
This heretofore, when youth and sprightly blood
Ran in my veins, I tasted, and enjoyed:
Ah those blest days!'—(here the old lecher smiled,
With sweet remembrance of past pleasures filled)
’But they are gone! Wishes alone remain,
And dreams of joy, ne'er to be felt again:
To abler youth I now the practice leave,
To whom this counsel and advice I give.
'But the dear mention of my gayer days
Has made me farther, than I would, digress.
'Tis time we now should in due place expound,
How guilt is after shrift to be atoned:
Enjoin no sour repentance, tear, and grief;
Eyes weep no cash, and you no profit give:
Sins, though of the first rate, must punished be,
Not by their own, but the actor's quality:
The poor, whose purse cannot the penance bear,
Let whipping serve, bare feet, and shirts of hair:
The richer fools to Compostella send,[1]
To Rome, Montserrat, or the Holy Land;
Let pardons, and the indulgence office drain
Their coffers, and enrich the Pope's with gain,
Make 'em build churches, monasteries found,
And dear-bought masses for their crimes compound.
'Let law and gospel rigid precepts set,
And make the paths to bliss rugged and strait;
- ↑ Ships used to be fitted out from the different ports with cargos of pilgrims to the shrine of St. James of Compostella, as a regular article of exportation. See Ellis's Original Letters: Second Series, A MS. ballad of the time of Henry VI., in the Trinity Library, Cambridge, describes one of these voyages.
