Classic Poem

1.

Good people: What? Will you of all be bereft?
Will you never learn wit, while a penny is left?
We are all like the dog in the fable, betrayed,
To let go the substance and snap at the shade.
Our specious pretenses
And foreign expenses
To war for religion will waste all our chink.
It's clipped, and it's snipped,
It's lent, and it's spent,
Till 'tis gone, till 'tis gone, to the devil I think.

2.

We pay for our newborn, and we pay for our dead;
We pay if we're single, we pay if we wed;
Which shows that our merciful senate don't fail
To begin at the head, and tax down to the tail.
We pay through the nose
For subjecting of foes,
But for all our expenses, get nothing but blows.
Abroad we're defeated;
At home we're cheated;
And the end on it, the end on it, the Lord above knows.

3.

We have parted with all our old money, to show
How we foolishly hope for a plenty of new;
But might have remembered, when it came to the push,
That a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
We now like poor wretches,
Are kept under hatches,
At rack and at manger, like beasts in the ark.
Since our burgesses and knights
Make us pay for our lights,
Why should we, why should we, be kept in the dark?