Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/134

And persecuted rats oft find in me
A refuge, and religious sanctuary.
But you profaner heretics, whoe'er
The Inquisition and its vengeance fear,
I charge, stand off, at peril come not near;
Let none at twelve score impiously untruss,
He enters Fox's lists that dare transgress;
For I'm by holy church in reverence had,
And all good catholic folk implore my aid.
These pictures, which you see, my story give,
The acts and monuments of me alive;
That frame, wherein with pilgrim weeds I stand,
Contains my travels to the Holy Land;
This, me and my Decemvirate at Rome,
When I for grant of my great order come.
There, with devotion wrapt, I hang in air,
With dove, like Mahomet's, whispering in my ear;
Here, Virgin in calash of clouds descends,
To be my safeguard from assaulting fiends.
Those tables by, and crutches of the lame,
My great achievements since my death proclaim;
Plague, ague, dropsy, palsy, stone, and gout,
Legions of maladies by me cast out,
More than the college knows, or ever fill
Quack's wiping-paper, and the weekly bill.
What Peter's shadow did of old, the same
Is fancied done by my all-powerful name;
For which some wear't about their necks and arms,
To guard from dangers, sicknesses, and harms;
And some on wombs the barren to relieve,
A miracle I better did alive.
Oft I by crafty Jesuit am taught
Wonders to do, and many a juggling feat.
Sometimes with chafing-dish behind me put,
I sweat like debauchee in hothouse shut,
And drip like any spitchcocked Huguenot;
Sometimes by secret springs I learn to stir,
As pasteboard saints dance by miraculous wire;