Page:Poetical Works of John Oldham.djvu/94

84 Bawds shall turn nuns, salt duchesses grow chaste, And paint, and pride, and lechery detest; Popes shall for kings' supremacy decide, And cardinals for Huguenots be tried; Sooner (which is the greatest impossible) Shall the vile brood of Loyola and hell Give o'er to plot, be villains, and rebel; Than I with utmost spite, and vengeance cease To prosecute, and plague their cursèd race. The rage of poets damned, of women's pride Contemned and scorned, or proffered lust denied; The malice of religious angry zeal, And all cashiered resenting statesmen feel; What prompts dire hags in their own blood to write, And sell their very souls to hell for spite; All this urge on my rank envenomed spleen, And with keen satire edge my stabbing pen, That its each home-set thrust their blood may draw, Each drop of ink like aquafortis gnaw. Red hot with vengeance thus, I'll brand disgrace So deep, no time shall e'er the marks deface; Till my severe and exemplary doom Spread wider than their guilt, till it become More dreaded than the bar, and frighten worse Than damning Pope's anathemas and curse.