Category Archives: Poetic flux

Tell me your side of it.

Pandemonian Plains

To wound the eternal cause with deepest harms,
A cheated gospel proves the surest arms:
Those arms, no hand can, like a preacher’s wield;
False friends may stab, when foes must fly the field.
This M* * * * * proves, in whom my utmost skill
Peer’d out no means of mischief, but the will.
He, in hard days, when ribbons gave no bread,
And Spitalfield’s brave sons from Tyburn fled,
Scampering from bailiffs, wisely dropp’d the shuttle,
To preach down truth, and common sense to throttle.
With cunning, oft in scrapes and bustles tried,
Tongue at-your-service, in all stories plied,
The dirtiest ridicule of things most holy,
And dirtier flattery of sin and folly,
A mimickry, at which buffoons would blush,
Religion cent-per-cented, at a rush,
Boldness, that dares to make the Bible lie,
And brass, that would a foundery supply,
Mid gather’d rogues, and blockheads, oft he stood,
And rous’d to fun the genuine brotherhood;
Scripture, and argument, oblig’d to yield,
Made learning, sense, and virtue, quit the field,
While fainting decency sunk down to see
The desk of God a puppet-show for me.
This said, invested with the robes of day,
To C * * * * * * *’s dome he wing’d his gladsome way,
And spread delightful to his wilder’d sense,
The pride of system, and the increase of pence.
Forth from its cobwebs straight the work he drew,
In mould still precious, and in dust still new.
This darling pet to usher to mankind,
High blown to ecstasy, the sage design’d;
And conn’d, with grand-parental love, the day,
When thro’ the world the heir should make its way.
The laughing spirit seized the lucky hour,
And round Columbia bade the trumpet roar,
And thus thro’ all her regions rang the song —
To Pandemonia’s plains, ye mortals, throng!

Timothy Dwight: The Triumph of Infidelity (1788)

Dull Seers, in Dreams Sublime

What tho’ dull seers have sung, in dreams sublime,
Thy ruin floats along the verge of time,
Tho’ without hands the stone from mountains riven,
Alarms my throne, and hastes the ire of heaven;
Tho’ bliss’ dread heralds earth’s far limits round
Pardon, and peace, and joy, ere long shall sound;
How beauteous are their feet! all regions cry,
And one great, natal song salute the sky:
Still, should I sink, a glorious fate I’ll find,
And sink amid the ruins of mankind.
But what blest onset shall I now begin,
To plunge the New World in the gulph of sin?
With sweet declension, down perdition’s steep,
How, in one host, her cheated millions sweep?
I hail the glorious project, first, and best,
That ever Satan’s bright invention blest;
That on this world my kingdom first began,
And lost my rival paradise, and man.
Twice fifteen suns are past, since C * * * * * *’s mind,
Thro’ doctrines deep, from common sense resin’d,
I led, a nice, mysterious work to frame,
With love of system, and with lust of same.
Fair in his hand the pleasing wonder grew,
Wrought with deep art, and stor’d with treasures new:
There the sweet sophism led the soul astray;
There round to heaven soft bent the crooked way:
Saints, he confess’d, the shortest rout pursue;
But, scarce behind, my children follow too.
Even Satan’s self ere long shall thither hie;
On cap, huzza! and thro’ the door go I!
Now palsied age has dimm’d his mental sight,
I’ll rouse the sage his master’s laws to fight,
The injuries, long he render’d, to repair
And wipe from heaven’s fair book his faith and prayer.

Timothy Dwight: The Triumph of Infidelity (1788)