Classic Poem

A Poem upon Mr. Hayes's Late Deliverance.
What! Hayes acquitted! Armstrong's magazine!
Tory turned Ignoramus, without spleen!
The Old Cause's grand Goliah's Pym is come,
Has slipped the noose, bilked Ketch, escaped his doom;
The City's hope, the charter's chief upholder,
Dissenters' joy, the Scriptures' best unfolder,
Is safe arrived. Proclaim a solemn day;
Let's halleluiahs to his praises pay,
For he's the hero of our state-plot-play.
The confined savior of the nation's gone,
His crystal plot and mighty train's undone;
Succeeding Hayes shall be his adopted son.
Can Salamanca's brood e'er want a boy
Whilst Hayes 's the acteonized fanatics' joy?
Who brings an ordered Babel on his tongue,
Turning sedition to the good old song
Of All Health to Old Noll , in each cabal,
Whose empty words the vulgar Gospel call.
The dove (precise dissenters say) 's returned
(For whom, through fear, the City faction mourned)
With olive branches, since the floods decrease,
And fatal tidings of the raven's case;
Who boldly wing'd o'er th' surface of the deep,
Till boist'rous billows did imprisoned keep
The wand'ring messenger of the active side,
Whose vast fanatic ark does doubtful glide,
Longing for th' 'batement of a blessed state tide.
Big with ill hopes, ill-meaning zealot's crew,
Whom no religion pleases but a new,
Can bless, speak fair, with the same breath undo.
Geneva's Trojan horse, adored by some,
Filled with armed men, traitors supposed from Rome,
Whose out-swelled Salamanca sides contain
The numerous offspring of Augusta's train.
Whitehall made room for this outlandish beast;
Each did admire, and for his favor pressed,
Till sable clouds of unexpected grief
O'erveiled the state, not thinking of relief.
The mighty monster's bowels yearned again,
And then brought forth a wondrous plot, not men;
Which (Hydra-like) when spoiled, another rose,
Debauched the land and its parent's heads expose;
Whose Jove-like brain a fruitful womb supplied,
Gave birth to Hayes and great Tom's princely pride.
When Hayes, their bully-cock, the party's head,
And Oates, the devil's mercury, are dead,
They, self-thought saints, a dissolution dread.