Classic Poem

Ye grizly Ghosts that walk in shades of Night
Like shades whose substance (though quite Matterlesse)
The dayly fowle Offender doth affright:
Why make ye Darknesse Paper for your Presse?
Do you imprint in Blacknesse, blacker formes
Of matters worse? or in our Fantazie
Impresse ye Figures, raising Horrors stormes?
Or how in darknesse come you to the Eye?
Do you but show? or show in Substances?
Thicken you Aire (and so a Shape assume?)
Or creepe you in some Corprall Essences?
Or els the sight deceaue with lesse then Fume?
And why ├┤ Hell hounds range you in the Night
Out of Earthes Center, (your infernall Hold?)
Lothe ye the Sunne? or is the day too light,
To do your deeds of Darknesse as ye would?
Can ye dead Bodies truly actuate?
And so such Bodies borrow of the Saints?
Or can ye wicked Bodies animate:
So take from God the cause of his Complaints?
For if you Soules infuse into the ill
You are the Father of their Spirites, and God
Complaines without cause that they crosse his Will:
Nor are they vnder naturally his Rodd.
But he it is, alone, that Soules creates,
Without whome nought was made that made hath bin:
And Bodies good, and Badd he animates,
Only he made not Death, first made by Sinne:
And what is Sinne, but only meere Defect?
So Sinne is nought: then nought hath Death begott:
And Nothing should, in sense, haue no effect:
So, Sinne, and Death Nought made, and Nought Is not:
I would it were not, but, too true, it is ,
But is as Canker doth to Siluer cleaue;
So, you, fowle Fiends, that loue such Filth as this
Do leaue no Sinners, that no Sinne do leaue
The purest Places you do hold an Hell;
And Places most impure you Heau'n esteeme:
The one do plague, the other please you well;
And so of deeds, of either kinde, you deeme.
To be among the deads Graues you are gladd;
Wherein you seeke their senslesse Bones to grine:
And loue to rattle them in signe you had
The Conquest of Mankind through Adams Eiue
So by a Woman (your familier)
Y' are now familier with Men night, and Day:
And which of both Familiers worse do warre
With Men, and Reason, it is hard to say.
These femine Familiers, but too oft
Torment vs men as if you (Fiends) they were:
Whose hard harts plac'd in their faire Bodies soft
Plague, whom that Beauty doth to them indeere.
Yet some so filthy are that they are best
When they are worst: that is, when fowle defame
With vse of trading ill, their Trade, hath ceast,
Then (with a Pox) they line Chast to their shame
Thus haue we got double Familiars,
Women and Diuels by a Womans pride:
Both which familiarly, wage secret wars
With Men, poore Men, that still the Brunt abide
But yet ├┤ Passion tax not All, for Some:
Some are so far from being Fiends, that they
Are Saints and Angels, yet such so become
Through Grace (not Nature) which their Natures sway
Many a vertues Virgin Grace hath made;
The chief whereof was that wife full of grace:
Who was a Mother maide which may perswade
All womens foes their friendship to embrace:
Yet many Maries full of Fiends there be
But no such Maries as this Saint we see.