Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/187

Rh Prodigious wonder! fit for Stow to tell, And stand recorded in his Chronicle; A thing less memorable would require As great a monument as London fire. A man of faith and uprightness is grown So strange a creature, both in court and town, That he with elephants may well be shown; A monster, more uncommon than a whale At Bridge, the last great comet, or the hail, Than Thames his double tide, or should he run With streams of milk or blood to Gravesend down. You're troubled that you've lost five hundred pound By treacherous fraud; another may be found, Has lost a thousand; and another yet, Double to that; perhaps his whole estate.
 * Little do folks the heavenly powers mind,

If they but 'scape the knowledge of mankind. Observe, with how demure and grave a look The rascal lays his hand upon the book; Then, with a praying face and lifted eye, Claps on his lips, and seals the perjury; If you persist his innocence to doubt, And boggle in belief, he'll straight rap out Oaths by the volley, each of which would make Pale atheists start, and trembling bullies quake; And more than would a whole ship's crew maintain To the East Indies hence, and back again ’As God shall pardon me, sir, I am free Of what you charge me with; let me ne'er see His face in heaven else; may these hands rot, These eyes drop out, if I e'er had a groat Of yours, or if they ever touched, or saw't.'

OLDHAM