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All the workes of Iohn Taylor the Water-Poet

Being Sixty and three in Number. Collected into one Volume by the Author [i.e. John Taylor]: With sundry new Additions, corrected, reuised, and newly Imprinted

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My free-borne Muse of bondage rudely treats,
And strange vagaries in my Brain-pan beats:
Whilst I vnmaske, vnuisor, or vnueile
The vertues of a Iaylor and a Iayle:
And then of Hanging, and the Hang-mans art
My lines doe end, and at the Gallowes part:
First, I doe finde in Histories enrold,
Iayles for antiquity, are very old:

127

For Ioseph was in prison (false accus'd,
That he his Masters Wife would haue abus'd.)
And all the world doth vnderstand, a Prison
Is not an vpstart Fable newly risen.
And Ieremie was vnder bolts and locks,
By Pashur once imprison'd in the stocks:
And after that he twice was put in thrall,
For true foretelling Israel, Iudah's fall.
The Sacred Histories doe well declare,
That Prisons for their time most ancient are.
Yet though my lines doe speake of Iayles, I see
That mine inuention and my Muse is free:
And I doe finde the name of Prisone, frames
Significant alluding Anagrams.
 

Ier. 22.2.

Chap. 32.

Chap. 37.