AN ELEGY Upon Marsh's one of the two Publick Sworn Informers against Protestant Religious meetings in the City of London, who lately dyed very miserably in the Prison of the Counter.
‘Ultor a Tergo Deus.’
Go set Scotch Bag-Pipes to the briskest Notes,
But let the
Singing men
rend[?] all their Throats,
Hang
Tyburn round with
Blocks,[?] and let
Ketch Squeeze
His Eyes to Tears, having thus lost his Fees;
My self (like a young Widdow) fain would Cry,
But like her too, I know not how, nor why;
Must get an
Onion quickly, or else Woe
Some
Irish Poet for
Alla-la-loo;
Oh
Hone! Oh
Hone! tell us what didst thou ail
Thus to
trappan[?] thy self into a
Jail?
Thou hadst a stout
Protection and its said
A lumping
Pension for good service paid:
Some
Bribes thou got'st, and many a
penalty
Was due we trow,
and why then wouldst thou dye?
Thy Cloven-footed Masters work's not done,
Thou shouldst have
ruin'd thousands ere thou'dst gone.
Thou shouldst have made each
Nonconformist bow,
And left them all as
Poor as thou wert now;
Then mounted on State with solemn pride,
Thou mightst to Hell in
guilded Chariot ride:
Been Pluto's
Vice-Roy, and preferred more
Than
Judas, or thy Brethren all before.
But now alas! thou scare canst get i'th end
To be the Groom o'th
Close stool Chamber to the
Fiend;
But tis in vain thus to Expostulate,
For poor
Informers warrant's out of date;
The
Man of Gath is fal'n that did so stickle,
And swore to confound each
Conventicle;
Grim death hath by a
Seizure snatcht him hence,
For to receive his
Dear-earn'd Recompence:
Follow the Scent, and from the
Stygian Lake,
Fit Junk for such a wretched Subject take;
Black as his
Trade let every Line appear,
And each Ear
Tingle his sad Fate shall hear,
Not that I am of that
Presumptious fry,
whose sawcy fingers
Pick-lock Destiny,
Who snatch
Fates book, and furiously transpose
To
Judgements all
misfortunes of their Foes;
Vertue may be
unhappy, and sometimes
Success here waits upon the worst of crimes,
It is another
Day, a
clearer Light
Must set all these seeming
disorders right;
Yet must we grant that
Heaven does now and then
Visibly punish
Irreligious Men,
And against none Its Arrows oftner fly
Than these
sworn Enemies to Piety,
A Persecuting Spirit never yet
But in a Cloud of shame and sorrow set;
Just
God! how equal are thy punishments
Thus blasting base
Designs with sad
Events;
Though Crafty in
self woven Nets is wrapt
And in the Pit he
digg'd for others, trapt;
Hark how the Ravens and the Screech-Owls cries.
With frightful Ecchoes Chaunt his obsequies.
Whether he's gone now
Dead I shal not say
But whilst
alive he took the broader way
If
Pythagorean Tenets are not
flams
He's grown a
Wolf by this, and worries
Lambs.
An Epitaph.
Stay
Reader! and
Piss here, for it is said
Under this Dirt there's an Informer laid,
If
Heaven be pleas'd when Mortals cease from
sin
And
Hell be pleas'd when
Villains enter in,
If Earth be pleas'd when it entombs a
Knave,
Sure
all are
pleas'd, for
Marsh's in his
Grave.
Printed in the Year 1675,