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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=419876" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Medal</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Of all our antic sights and pageantry <br>Which English idiots run in crowds to see, <br>The Polish Medal bears the prize alone; <br>A monster, more the favourite of the town <br>Than either fairs or theatres have shown. <br>Never did art so well with nature strive, <br>Nor ever idol seemed so much alive; <br>So like the man, so golden to the sight, <br>So base within, so counterfeit and light. <br>One side is filled with title and with face; <br>And, lest the king should want a regal place, <br>On the reverse a tower the town surveys, <br>O'er which our mounting sun his beams displays. <br>The word, pronounced aloud by shrieval voice, <br>Loetamur, which in Polish is Rejoice, <br>The day, month, year, to the great act are joined, <br>And a new canting holiday designed. <br>Five days he sate for every cast and look, <br>Four more days than God to finish Adam took. <br>But who can tell what essence angels are <br>Or how long Heaven was making Lucifer? <br>Oh, could the style that copied every grace <br>And ploughed such furrows for an eunuch face, <br>Could it have formed his ever-changing will, <br>The various piece had tired the graver's skill! <br>A martial hero first, with early care <br>Blown, like a pigmy by the winds, to war; <br>A beardless chief, a rebel ere a man, <br>So young his hatred to his Prince began. <br>Next this, (how wildly will ambition steer!) <br>A vermin wriggling in the usurper's ear, <br>Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold, <br>He cast himself into the saint-like mould; <br>Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain, <br>The loudest bag-pipe of the squeaking train. <br>But, as 'tis hard to cheat a juggler's eyes, <br>His open lewdness he could ne'er disguise. <br>There split the saint; for hypocritic zeal <br>Allows no sins but those it can conceal. <br>Whoring to scandal gives too large a scope; <br>Saints must not trade, but they may interlope. <br>The ungodly principle was all the same; <br>But a gross cheat betrays his partners' game. <br>Besides, their pace was formal, grave, and slack; <br>His nimble wit outran the heavy pack. <br>Yet still he found hs fortune at a stay, <br>Whole droves of blockheads choking up his way; <br>They took, but not rewarded, his advice; <br>Villain and wit exact a double price. <br>Power was his aim; but thrown from that pretence, <br>The wretch turned loyal in his own defence, <br>And malice reconciled him to his Prince. <br>Him in the anguish of his soul he served, <br>Rewarded faster still than he deserved. <br>Behold him now exalted into trust, <br>His counsels oft convenient, seldom just; <br>Even in the most sincere advice he gave <br>He had a grudging still to be a knave. <br>The frauds he learnt in his fanatic years <br>Made him uneasy in his lawful gears. <br>At best, as little honest as he could, <br>And, like white witches, mischievously good. <br>To his first bias longingly he leans <br>And rather would be great by wicked means. <br>Thus framed for ill, he loosed our triple hold, <br>(Advice unsafe, precipitous, and bold.) <br>From hence those tears, that Ilium was our woe: <br>Who helps a powerful friend forearms a foe. <br>What wonder if the waves prevail so far, <br>When he cut down the banks that made the bar? <br>Seas follow but their nature to invade; <br>But he by art our native strength betrayed. <br>So Samson to his foe his force confest, <br>And to be shorn lay slumbering on her breast. <br>But when this fatal counsel, found too late, <br>Exposed its author to the public hate, <br>When his just sovereign by no impious way <br>Could be seduced to arbitrary sway, <br>Forsaken of that hope, he shifts his sail, <br>Drives down the current with the popular gale, <br>And shows the fiend confessed without a veil. <br>He preaches to the crowd that power is lent, <br>But not conveyed to kingly government, <br>That claims successive bear no binding force, <br>That coronation oaths are things of course; <br>Maintains the multitude can never err, <br>And sets the people in the papal chair. <br>The reason's obvious, interest never lies; <br>The most have still their interest in their eyes, <br>The power is always theirs, and power is ever wise. <br>Almighty crowd! thou shortenest all dispute. <br>Power is thy essence, wit thy attribute! <br>Nor faith nor reason make thee at a stay, <br>Thou leapst o'er all eternal truths in thy Pindaric way! <br>Athens, no doubt, did righteously decide, <br>When Phocion and when Socrates were tried; <br>As righteously they did those dooms repent; <br>Still they were wise, whatever way they went. <br>Crowds err not, though to both extremes they run; <br>To kill the father and recall the son. <br>Some think the fools were most, as times went then, <br>But now the world's o'erstocked with prudent men. <br>The common cry is even religion's test; <br>The Turk's is at Constantinople best, <br>Idols in India, Popery in Rome, <br>And our own worship is only true at home, <br>And true but for the time; 'tis hard to know <br>How long we please it shall continue so; <br>This side to-day, and that to-morrow burns; <br>So all are God Almighties in their turns. <br>A tempting doctrine, plausible and new; <br>What fools our fathers were, if this be true! <br>Who, to destroy the seeds of civil war, <br>Inherent right in monarchs did declare; <br>And, that a lawful power might never cease, <br>Secured succession to secure our peace. <br>Thus property and sovereign sway at last <br>In equal balances were justly cast; <br>But this new Jehu spurs the hot-mounted horse, <br>Instructs the beast to know his native force, <br>To take the bit between his teeth and fly <br>To the next headlong steep of anarchy. <br>Too happy Engand, if our good we knew, <br>Would we possess the freedom we pursue! <br>The lavish government can give no more; <br>Yet we repine, and plenty makes us poor. <br>God tried us once; our rebel fathers fought; <br>He glutted them with all the power they sought, <br>Till, mastered by their own usurping brave, <br>The free-born subject sunk into a slave. <br>We loathe our manna, and we long for quails; <br>Ah! what is man, when his own wish prevails! <br>How rash, how swift to plunge himself in ill, <br>Proud of his power and boundless in his will! <br>That kings can do no wrong we must believe; <br>None can they do, and must they all receive? <br>Help. Heaven, or sadly we shall see an hour <br>When neither wrong nor right are in their power! <br>Already they have lost their best defence, <br>The benefit of laws which they dispense. <br>No justice to their righteous cause allowed, <br>But baffled by an arbitrary crowd; <br>And medals graved, their conquest to record, <br>The stamp and coin of their adopted lord. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The man who laughed but once, to see an ass <br>Mumbling to make the cross-grained thistles pass, <br>Might laugh again to see a jury chaw <br>The prickles of unpalatable law. <br>The witnesses that, leech-like lived on blood, <br>Sucking for them were med'cinally good; <br>But when they fastened on their festered sore, <br>Then justice and religion they forswore, <br>Thus men are raised by factions and decried, <br>And rogue and saint distinguished by their side; <br>They rack even Scripture to confess their cause <br>And plead a call to preach in spite of laws. <br>But that's no news to the poor injured page, <br>It has been used as ill in every age, <br>And is constrained with patience all to take, <br>For what defence can Greek and Hebrew make? <br>Happy who can this talking trumpet seize, <br>They make it speak whatever sense they please! <br>'Twas framed at first our oracle to inquire; <br>But since our sects in prophecy grow higher, <br>The text inspires not them, but they the text inspire. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">London, thou great emporium of our isle, <br>O thou too bounteous, thou too fruitful Nile! <br>How shall I praise or curse to thy desert, <br>Or separate thy sound from thy corrupted part? <br>I called thee Nile; the parallel will stand: <br>Thy tides of wealth o'erflow the fattened land; <br>Yet monsters from thy large increase we find <br>Engendered on the slime thou leavest behind. <br>Sedition has not wholly seized on thee, <br>Thy nobler parts are from infection free. <br>Of Israel's tribes thou hast a numerous band, <br>But still the Canaanite is in the land. <br>Thy military chiefs are brave and true, <br>Nor are thy disenchanted burghers few. <br>The head is loyal which thy heart commands, <br>But what's a head with two such gouty hands? <br>The wise and wealthy love the surest way <br>And are content to thrive and to obey. <br>But wisdom is to sloth too great a slave; <br>None are so busy as the fool and knave. <br>Those let me curse; what vengeance will they urge, <br>Whose ordures neither plague nor fire can purge, <br>Nor sharp experience can to duty bring <br>Nor angry Heaven nor a forgiving king! <br>In gospel-phrase their chapmen they betray; <br>Their shops are dens, the buyer is their prey; <br>The knack of trades is living on the spoil; <br>They boast e'en when each other they beguile. <br>Customs to steal is such a trivial thing <br>That 'tis their charter to defraud their King. <br>All hands unite of every jarring sect; <br>They cheat the country first, and then infect. <br>They for God's cause their monarchs dare dethrone, <br>And they'll be sure to make His cause their own. <br>Whether the plotting Jesuit laid the plan <br>Of murdering kings, or the French Puritan, <br>Our sacrilegious sects their guides outgo <br>And kings and kingly power would murder too. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">What means their traitorous combination less, <br>Too plain to evade, too shameful to confess? <br>But treason is not owned when 'tis descried; <br>Successful crimes alone are justified. <br>The men who no consiracy would find, <br>Who doubts but, had it taken, they had joined? <br>Joined in a mutual covenant of defence, <br>At first without, at last against their Prince? <br>If sovereign right by sovereign power they scan, <br>The same bold maxim holds in God and man: <br>God were not safe; his thunder could they shun, <br>He should be forced to crown another son. <br>Thus, when the heir was from the vineyard thrown, <br>The rich possession was the murderers' own. <br>In vain to sophistry they have recourse; <br>By proving theirs no plot they prove 'tis worse, <br>Unmasked rebellion, and audiacious force, <br>Which, though not actual, yet all eyes may see <br>'Tis working, in the immediate power to be; <br>For from pretended grievances they rise <br>First to dislike and after to dispise; <br>Then, Cyclop-like, in human flesh to deal, <br>Chop up a minister at every meal; <br>Perhaps not wholly to melt down the king, <br>But clip his regal rights within the ring; <br>From thence to asssume the power of peace and war <br>And ease him by degrees of public care. <br>Yet, to consult his dignity and fame, <br>He should have leave to exercise the name, <br>And hold the cards while Commons played the game. <br>For what can power give more than food and drink, <br>To live at ease and not be bound to think? <br>These are the cooler methods of their crime, <br>But their hot zealots think 'tis loss of time; <br>On utmost bounds of loyalty they stand, <br>And grin and whet like a Croatian band <br>That waits impatient for the last command: <br>Thus outlaws open villainy maintain; <br>They steal not, but in squadrons scour the plain; <br>And if their power the passengers subdue, <br>The most most have right, the wrong is in the few. <br>Such impious axioms foolishly they show, <br>For in some soils Republics will not grow: <br>Our temperate Isle will no extremes sustain <br>Of popular sway or arbitrary reign: <br>But slides between them both into the best, <br>Secure in freedom, in a monarch blest. <br>And, though the climate, vexed with various winds, <br>Works through our yielding bodies on our minds, <br>The wholesome tempest purges what it breeds <br>To recommend the calmness that succeeds. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But thou, the pander of the people's hearts, <br>(O crooked soul and serpentine in arts!)… <br>What curses on thy blasted name will fall, <br>Which age to age their legacy shall call, <br>For all must curse the woes that must descend on all! <br>Religion thou hast none: thy mercury <br>Has passed through every sect, or theirs through thee. <br>But what thou givest, that venom still remains, <br>And the poxed nation feels thee in their brains. <br>What else inspires the tongues and swells the breasts <br>Of all thy bellowing renegado priests, <br>That preach up thee for God, dispense thy laws, <br>And with thy stum ferment their fainting cause, <br>Fresh fumes of madness raise, and toil and sweat, <br>To make the formidable cripple great? <br>Yet should thy crimes succeed, should lawless power <br>Compass those ends thy greedy hopes devour, <br>Thy canting friends thy mortal foes would be, <br>Thy god and theirs will never long agree; <br>For thine, if thou hast any, must be one <br>That lets the world and human kind alone; <br>A jolly god that passes hours too well <br>To promise Heaven or threaten us with Hell, <br>That unconcerned can at rebellion sit <br>And wink at crimes he did himself commit. <br>A tyrant theirs; the heaven their priesthood paints <br>A conventicle of gloomy sullen saints; <br>A heaven, like Bedlam, slovenly and sad, <br>Foredoomed for souls with false religion mad. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Without a vision poets can foreshow <br>What all but fools by common sense may know: <br>If true succession from our Isle should fail, <br>And crowds profane with impious arms prevail, <br>Not thou nor those thy factious arts engage <br>Shall reap that harvest of rebellious rage, <br>With which thou flatterest thy decrepit age. <br>The swelling poison of the several sects, <br>Which, wanting vent, the nation's health infects, <br>Shall burst its bag; and fighting out their way, <br>The various venoms on each other prey. <br>The Presbyter, puffed up with spiritual pride, <br>Shall on the necks of the lewd nobles ride, <br>His brethren damn, the civil power defy, <br>And parcel out republic prelacy. <br>But short shall be his reign; his rigid yoke <br>And tyrant power will puny sects provoke, <br>And frogs, and toads, and all the tadpole train <br>Will croak to Heaven for help from this devouring crane. <br>The cut-throat sword and clamorous gown shall jar <br>In sharing their ill-gotten spoils of war; <br>Chiefs shall be grudged the part which they pretend; <br>Lords envy lords, and friends with every friend <br>About their impious merit shall contend. <br>The surly Commons shall respect deny <br>And justle peerage out with property. <br>Their General either shall his trust betray <br>And force the crowd to arbitrary sway, <br>Or they, suspecting his ambitious aim, <br>In hate of kings shall cast anew the frame <br>And thrust out Collatine that bore their name. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus inborn broils the factions would engage, <br>Or wars of exiled heirs, or foreign rage, <br>Till halting vengeance overtook our age, <br>And our wild labours, wearied into rest, <br>Reclined us on a rightful monarch's breast. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Pudet hoec opprobria vobis <br>Et dici potuisse et non potuisse refelli.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Dryden">John Dryden</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=419876" data-title="The Medal de John Dryden" data-description="Of all our antic sights and pageantry 
Which English idiots run in crowds to see, 
The Polish Medal bears the prize alone; 
A monster, more the favourite of the town 
Than either fairs or theatres have shown. 
Never did art so well with nature str..."></div>
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