Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/218

'Tis granted, sir; but yet without all these,
Without your boasted laws and policies,
Or fear of judges, or of justices;
Whoever saw the wolves, that he can say,
Like more inhuman us, so bent on prey,
To rob their fellow wolves upon the way?
Whoever saw church and fanatic bear,
Like savage mankind one another tear?
What tiger e'er, aspiring to be great.
In plots and factions did embroil the State?
Or when was't heard upon the Libyan plains,
Where the stem monarch of the desert reigns,
That Whig and Tory lions in wild jars
Madly engaged for choice of shrieves and mayors?
The fiercest creatures we in nature find,
Respect their figure still in the same kind;
To others rough, to these they gentle be,
And live from noise, from feuds, from factions free
No eagle does upon his peerage sue,*
And strive some meaner eagle to undo;
No fox was e'er suborned by spite or hire,
Against his brother fox his life to swear;
Not any hind, for impotence at rut,
Did e'er the stag into the Arches put,
Where a grave dean the weighty case might state,
What makes in law a carnal job complete;
They fear no dreadful quo warranto writ,
To shake their ancient privilege and right;
No courts of sessions, or assize are there,
No Common-Pleas, King's-Bench, or Chancery-Bar;
But happier they, by nature's charter free,
Secure and safe in mutual peace agree,
And know no other law but equity.
'Tis man, 'tis man alone, that worst of brutes,
Who first brought up the trade of cutting throats,
Did honour first, that barbarous term, devise,
Unknown to all the gentler savages;
And, as 'twere not enough t' have fetched from hell,
Powder and guns, with all the arts to kill,