Chapter 6 No.6

Forgive (original mildness) this ill-govern'd zeal,

'Tis all the angry slighted Muse can do

In the pollution of these days;

No province now is left her but to rail,

And poetry has lost the art to praise,

Alas, the occasions are so few:

None e'er but you,

And your Almighty Master, knew

With heavenly peace of mind to bear

(Free from our tyrant passions, anger, scorn, or fear)

The giddy turns of popular rage,

And all the contradictions of a poison'd age;

The Son of God pronounced by the same breath

Which straight pronounced his death;

And though I should but ill be understood,

In wholly equalling our sin and theirs,

And measuring by the scanty thread of wit

What we call holy, and great, and just, and good,

(Methods in talk whereof our pride and ignorance make use,)

And which our wild ambition foolishly compares

With endless and with infinite;

Yet pardon, native Albion, when I say,

Among thy stubborn sons there haunts that spirit of the Jews,

That those forsaken wretches who to-day

Revile his great ambassador,

Seem to discover what they would have done

(Were his humanity on earth once more)

To his undoubted Master, Heaven's Almighty Son.