Samuel(poetButler (1612 – 1680)
English satirical poet.
With books and money plac'd for show
Like nest-eggs to make clients lay,
And for his false opinion pay.
He made an instrument to know
If the moon shine at full or no.
For Rhime the Rudder is of Verses,
With which like Ships they steer their courses.
For those that run away and fly,
Take place at least o' the enemy.
I am not now in fortune's power:
He that is down can fall no lower.
They who study mathematiks only to fix their minds, and render them the steadyer to apply to all other things, as there are many who profess to do, are as wise as those who think by rowing boats, to learn to swim.
When civil fury first grew high,
And men fell out, they knew not why;
When hard words, jealousies, and fears,
Set folks together by the ears,
And made them fight, like mad or drunk,
For Dame Religion, as for punk; Whose honesty they all durst swear for,
Though not a man of them knew wherefore:
When Gospel-Trumpeter, surrounded
With long-ear'd rout, to battle sounded,
And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick,
Was beat with fist, instead of a stick;
Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling,
And out he rode a colonelling.
Quoth Hudibras, "I smell a rat!
Ralpho, thou dost prevaricate."
He ne'er consider'd it, as loth
To look a gift-horse in the mouth.
Some have been beaten till they know
What wood a cudgel's of by th' blow;
Some kick'd until they can feel whether
A shoe be Spanish or neat's leather.
No Indian prince has to his palace
More followers than a thief to the gallows.
He was in LOGIC a great critic,
Profoundly skill'd in analytic;
He could distinguish, and divide
A hair 'twixt south, and south-west side:
On either which he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute,
He'd undertake to prove, by force
Of argument, a man's no horse;
He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl,
And that a lord may be an owl,
A calf an alderman, a goose a justice,
And rooks Committee-men and Trustees.
He had got a hurt
O' the inside, of a deadlier sort.
When pious frauds and holy shifts
Are dispensations and gifts.
And poets by their sufferings grow,—
As if there were no more to do,
To make a poet excellent,
But only want and discontent.
For truth is precious and divine,—
Too rich a pearl for carnal swine.
Doubtless the pleasure is as great
Of being cheated as to cheat.
There 's but the twinkling of a star
Between a man of peace and war.
Love is a boy by poets styl'd;
Then spare the rod and spoil the child.
Quoth she, I 've heard old cunning stagers
Say fools for arguments use wagers.