Classic Poem

No city in the spacious universe
Boasts of religion more, or minds it less;
Of reformation talks and government,
Backed with an hundred Acts of Parliament,
Those useless scarecrows of neglected laws,
That miss th' effect by missing first the cause:
Thy magistrates, who should reform the town,
Punish the poor men's faults, but hide their own;
Suppress the players' booths in Smithfield Fair,
But leave the Cloisters, for their wives are there,
Where all the scenes of lewdness do appear.
Satire, the arts and mysteries forbear,
Too black for thee to write or us to hear;
No man, but he that is as vile as they,
Can all the tricks and cheats of trade survey.
Some in clandestine companies combine,
Erect new stocks to trade beyond the line:
With air and empty names beguile the town,
And raise new credits first, then dry 'em down:
Divide the empty nothing into shares,
To set the town together by the ears.
The sham projectors and the brokers join,
And both the cully merchant undermine;
First he must be drawn in and then betrayed,
And they demolish the machine they made:
So conjuring chymists, with their charm and spell,
Some wondrous liquid wondrously exhale;
But when the gaping mob their money pay,
The cheat's dissolved, the vapour flies away:
The wond'ring bubbles stand amazed to see
Their money mountebanked to Mercury.
Some fit out ships, and double freights ensure,
And burn the ships to make the voyage secure:
Promiscuous plunders through the world commit,
And with the money buy their safe retreat.
Others seek out to Afric's torrid zone,
And search the burning shores of Serralone;
There in insufferable heats they fry,
And run vast risks to see the gold, and die:
The harmless natives basely they trepan,
And barter baubles for the souls of men:
The wretches they to Christian climes bring o'er,
To server worse heathens than they did before.
The cruelties they suffer there are such,
Amboyna's nothing, they've outdone the Dutch.
Cortez, Pizarro, Guzman, Penaloe,
Who drank the blood and gold of Mexico,
Who thirteen millions of souls destroyed,
And left one third of God's creation void;
By birth for nature's butchery designed,
Compared to these are merciful and kind.
Death could their cruellest designs fulfil,
Blood quenched their thirst, and it sufficed to kill:
But these the tender coup de grâce deny,
And make men beg in vain for leave to die;
To more than Spanish cruelty inclined,
Torment the body and debauch the mind:
The ling'ring life of slavery preserve,
And vilely teach them both to sin and serve.
In vain they talk to them of shades below:
They fear no hell, but where such Christians go.
Of Jesus Christ they very often hear,
Often as his blaspheming servants swear;
They hear and wonder what strange gods they be,
Can bear with patience such indignity.
They look for famines, plagues, disease and death,
Blasts from above and earthquakes from beneath:
But when they see regardless heaven looks on,
They curse our gods, or think that we have none.
Thus thousands to religion are brought o'er,
And made worse devils than they were before.