Fifty of the Protestant Ballads :: :: University of Virginia Library

Protestant England! that hast ever stood
God's champion-nation for the true and good,
Blest, till of late (it needs not long to search)
With His best boon, a pure and pious Church,
Alas! that priestcraft, subtle as of yore,
Corrodes thy heart, a maggot at the core;
Alas! that many among thy clergy still
Are bribed by Rome to serve her with a will,
And, while their gathered flocks seek pastures fair,
Feed them with gauds and shams instead of pray'r,
Lure them to drink sweet poison with their food,
And give them evil when they come for good!

O wives, O sisters,—see ye be not snared
By tinsel traps for silly souls prepared;
O youths, with tender consciences of sin,—
O men of harder shells, but soft within,—
O fashionable fribbles, gaping wide
For any novelty the fates provide,—

Take heed of venomed influences there,
The charmer charmeth cunningly,—beware!
I know how snakelike round weak hearts and minds
This chain of superstitious priestcraft winds;
I see how well confession suits your scheme,
How drugged with monkshood is your deadly dream,—
To sin and shrive as often as you can,
And rest absolved, O lie of lies,—by man!
I feel how music, poetry, and fear
Are work'd by priests to win Rome perverts here;
I note the fools who flock about those priests,
And serve their mummeries in fasts and feasts:
Incense, and monotone, and gaudy vest,
And dim religious light, and all the rest
Are schemed as soporifics to the mind
To lull men off asleep, deaf, dumb, and blind,
That priests may mould the laymen with due skill,
And twist them like lay figures to their will!

Judge now how basely with unhallowed zeal
These traitors plot against the public weal;
From their own books I pick each poisoned hint
And take their tactics from themselves in print.