Hudibras Samuel Butler (free novels to read TXT) 📖

Toss’d in a furious hurricane,
Did Oliver give up his reign;172
And was believ’d, as well by saints,
As mortal men and miscreants,
To founder in the Stygian ferry;
Until he was retriev’d by Sterry;
Who, in a false erroneous dream,
Mistook the New Jerusalem
Profanely for th’ apocryphal
False Heaven at the end o’ th’ hall;173
Whither it was decreed by fate
His precious reliques to translate.
So Romulus was seen before
B’ as orthodox a senator,174
From whose divine illumination
He stole the Pagan revelation.

Next him his son and heir apparent
Succeeded, though a lame vicegerent;175
Who first laid by the Parliament,
The only crutch on which he leant;
And then sunk underneath the state,
That rode him above horseman’s weight.

And now the saints began their reign,
For which th’ had yearn’d so long in vain,
And felt such bowel-hankerings,
To see an empire all of kings.
Deliver’d from the Egyptian awe
Of justice, government, and law,
And free t’ erect what spiritual cantons
Should be reveal’d, or gospel Hans-Towns,
To edify upon the ruins
Of John of Leyden’s old out-goings;176
Who for a weather-cock hung up,
Upon the mother church’s top:
Was made a type, by Providence,
Of all their revelations since;
And now fulfill’d by his successors,
Who equally mistook their measures:
For when they came to shape the model,
Not one could fit another’s noddle;
But found their light and gifts more wide
From fadging than th’ unsanctify’d;
While ev’ry individual brother
Strove hand to fist against another;
And still the maddest, and most crackt,
Were found the busiest to transact:
For though most hands dispatch apace,
And make light work, (the proverb says,)
Yet many diff’rent intellects
Are found t’ have contrary effects;
And many heads t’ obstruct intrigues,
As slowest insects have most legs.

Some were for setting up a king;
But all the rest for no such thing,
Unless King Jesus. Others tamper’d
For Fleetwood, Desborough, and Lambert;
Some for the Rump, and some, more crafty,
For Agitators, and the safety;
Some for the gospel, and massacres
Of spiritual affidavit-makers,
That swore to any human regence,
Oaths of supremacy and allegiance;
Yea, though the ablest swearing saint
That vouch’d the bulls o’ the Covenant:
Others for pulling down th’ high places
Of synods and provincial classes,
That us’d to make such hostile inroads
Upon the saints, like bloody Nimrods:
Some for fulfilling prophecies,
And th’ expiration of th’ excise;
And some against th’ Egyptian bondage
Of holy-days, and paying poundage:
Some for the cutting down of groves,
And rectifying bakers’ loaves;
And some for finding out expedients
Against the slav’ry of obedience:
Some were for gospel ministers,
And some for red-coat seculars,
As men most fit t’ hold forth the word,
And wield the one and th’ other sword:
Some were for carrying on the work
Against the Pope, and some the Turk:
Some for engaging to suppress
The Camisado of surplices,
That gifts and dispensations hinder’d,
And turn’d to th’ outward man the inward;
More proper for the cloudy night
Of popery than gospel light:
Others were for abolishing
That tool of matrimony, a ring,
With which th’ unsanctify’d bridegroom
Is marry’d only to a thumb
(As wise as ringing of a pig,
That us’d to break up ground, and dig;)
The bride to nothing but her will,
That nulls the after-marriage still:
Some were for th’ utter extirpation
Of linsey-woolsey in the nation;
And some against all idolizing
The cross in shops-books, or baptizing;
Others to make all things recant
The Christian or surname of saint;
And force all churches, streets, and towns,
The holy title to renounce:
Some ’gainst a third estate of souls,
And bringing down the price of coals:
Some for abolishing black-pudding,
And eating nothing with the blood in;
To abrogate them roots and branches;
While others were for eating haunches
Of warriors, and now and then,
The flesh of kings and mighty men;
And some for breaking of their bones
With rods of ir’n, by secret ones;
For thrashing mountains, and with spells
For hallowing carriers’ packs and bells:
Things that the legend never heard of,
But made the wicked sore afear’d of.

The quacks of government (who sate
At th’ unregarded helm of state,
And understood this wild confusion
Of fatal madness and delusion,
Must, sooner than a prodigy,
Portend destruction to be nigh)
Consider’d timely how t’ withdraw,
And save their wind-pipes from the law;
For one rencounter at the bar
Was worse than all th’ had ’scap’d in war;
And therefore met in consultation,
To cant and quack upon the nation;
Not for the sickly patient’s sake;
Nor what to give but what to take;
To feel the pulses of their fees,
More wise than fumbling arteries:
Prolong the snuff of life in pain,
And from the grave recover⁠—Gain.

’Mong these there was a politician177
With more heads than a beast in vision,
And more intrigues in ev’ry one
Than all the whores of Babylon;
So politic, as if one eye
Upon the other were a spy,
That, to trepan the one to think
The other blind, both strove to blink;
And in his dark pragmatic way,
As busy as a child at play.
H’ had seen three governments run down,
And had a hand in ev’ry one;
Was for ’em and against ’em all,
But barb’rous when they came to fall:
For, by trepanning th’ old to ruin,
He made his int’rest with the new one;
Play’d true and faithful, though against
His conscience, and was still advanc’d:
For by the witchcraft of rebellion
Transform’d