Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/184

174 You scarce can bear a puny trifling ill, It goes so deep, pray Heaven, it does not kill! And all this trouble, and this vain ado, Because a friend (forsooth) has proved untrue. Shame o’ your beard! can this so much amaze? Were you not born in good King Jimmy's days? And are not you at length yet wiser grown, When threescore winters on your head have snown?
 * Almighty Wisdom gives in Holy Writ

Wholesome advice to all that follow it; And those that will not its great counsels hear, May learn from mere experience how to bear (Without vain struggling) fortune's yoke, and how They ought her rudest shocks to undergo. There's not a day so solemn through the year, Not one red letter in the calendar, But we of some new crime discovered hear: Theft, murder, treason, perjury, what not? Money by cheating, padding, poisoning got. Nor is it strange; so few are now the good, That fewer scarce were left at Noah's flood; Should Sodom's angel here in fire descend, Our nation wants ten men to save the land. Fate has reserved us for the very lees Of time, where ill admits of no degrees; An age so bad old poets ne'er could frame, Nor find a metal out to give't a name. This your experience knows, and yet for all On faith of God, and man, aloud you call, Louder than on Queen Bess's day the rout For Antichrist burned in effigy shout.