Classic Poem

1.

I sing a woeful ditty
Of a wound that long will smart-a,
Giv'n, the more's the pity,
In the realm of Magna Charta.
Youth, youth, should'st better be slain by thy foes
Than live to be hanged for cutting a nose.

2.

Our good King Charles the Second,
Too flippant of treasure and moisture,
Stooped from the queen infecund
To a wench of orange and oyster.
Consulting his cazzo, he found it expedient
To engender Don Johns on Nell the comedian.

3.

The lecherous vainglory
Of being limed with majesty
Mounts up to such a story
This Bitchington travesty,
That to equal her lover, the baggage must dare
To be Helen the Second and cause of a war.

4.

And he, our amorous Jove,
Whilst she lay dry-bobbed under,
To repair the defects of his love,
Must lend her his lightning and thunder;
And for one night prostitutes to her commands
Monmouth, his Life Guards, O'Brien, and Sandys.

5.

And now all the fears of the French
And pressing need of navy
Are dwindled into a salt wench
And amo, amas, amavi .
Nay he'll venture his subsidy so she cloven may see,
In female revenge, the nostrils of Coventry.

6.

O ye Haymarket Hectors,
How came ye thus charmed
To be the dissectors
Of one poor nose unarmed,
Unfit to wear sword or follow a trumpet,
That would brandish your knives at the word of a strumpet?

7.

But was it not ungrateful
In Monmouth, ap Sidney, ap Carlo,
To contrive an act so hateful,
O prince of Wales by Barlow?
Since the kind world had dispensed with his mother,
Might not he well have spared the nose of John Brother?

8.

Beware, all ye parliamenteers,
How each of his voice disposes;
Bab May in the Commons, C. Rex in the Peers,
Sit telling your fates on your noses,
And decree, at the mention of every slut,
Whose nose shall continue and whose shall be cut.

9.

If the sister of Rose
Be a whore so anointed
That the Parliament's nose
Must for her be disjointed,
Should you but name the prerogative whore,
How the bullets would whistle, the cannon would roar!