Samuel(poetButler (1612 – 1680)
English satirical poet.
Why should not conscience have vacation
As well as other courts o' th' nation?
Like feather bed betwixt a wall
And heavy brunt of cannon ball.
I 'll make the fur
Fly 'bout the ears of the old cur.
As men of inward light are wont
To turn their optics in upon 't.
Each window like a pill'ry appears,
With heads thrust thro' nail'd by the ears.
Friend Ralph, thou hast
Outrun the constable at last.
For rhetoric, he could not ope
His mouth, but out there flew a trope;
And when he happen'd to break off
I' th' middle of his speech, or cough,
H' had hard words,ready to show why,
And tell what rules he did it by;
Else, when with greatest art he spoke,
You'd think he talk'd like other folk,
For all a rhetorician's rules
Teach nothing but to name his tools.
There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.
These reasons made his mouth to water.
Love in your hearts as idly burns
As fire in antique Roman urns.
With many a stiff thwack, many a bang,
Hard crab-tree and old iron rang.
If he that in the field is slain
Be in the bed of honour lain,
He that is beaten may be said
To lie in honour's truckle-bed.
But Hudibras gave him a twitch
As quick as lightning in the breech,
Just in the place where honour's lodg'd,
As wise philosophers have judg'd;
Because a kick in that part more
Hurts honour than deep wounds before.
Beside, 't is known he could speak Greek
As naturally as pigs squeak;
That Latin was no more difficile
Than to a blackbird 't is to whistle.
We grant, although he had much wit,
He was very shy of using it.
'Cause grace and virtue are within
Prohibited degrees of kin;
And therefore no true saint allows
They shall be suffer'd to espouse.
In mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater:
For he, by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve, by sines and tangents straight,
If bread and butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o' th' day
The clock doth strike, by algebra.
Have always been at daggers-drawing,
And one another clapper-clawing.
With crosses, relics, crucifixes,
Beads, pictures, rosaries, and pixes,—
The tools of working our salvation
By mere mechanic operation.
The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty,
For want of fighting was grown rusty,
And ate into itself, for lack
Of somebody to hew and hack.