Young Joe the ostler come in sad, He said th’old mare had bit his dad. He said there’d come a blazing screeching Daft Bible-prophet chap a-preaching, Had put th’old mare in such a taking She’d thought the bloody earth was quaking. And others come and spread a tale Of cut-throats out of Gloucester jail, And how we needed extra cops With all them Welsh come picking hops; With drunken Welsh in all our sheds We might be murdered in our beds. By all accounts, both men and wives Had had the scare up of their lives. I ate and drank and gathered strength, And stretched along the bench full length, Or crossed to window seat to pat Black Silas Jones’s little cat. At four I called, ’You devil’s own, The second trumpet shall be blown. The second trump, the second blast; Hell’s flames are loosed, and judgment’s passed. Too late for mercy now. Take warning I’m death and hell and Judgment morning.’ I hurled the bench into the settle, I banged the table on the kettle, I sent Joe’s quart of cider spinning. ’Lo, here begins my second inning.’ Each bottle, mug, and jug and pot I smashed to crocks in half a tot; And Joe, and Si, and Nick, and Percy I rolled together topsy versy. And as I ran I heard ’em call, ’Now damn to hell, what’s gone with Saul?’ Out into street I ran uproarious The devil dancing in me glorious. And as I ran I yell and shriek ’Come on, now, turn the other cheek.’ Across the way by almshouse pump I see old puffing parson stump. Old parson, red-eyed as a ferret From nightly wrestlings with the spirit; I ran across, and barred his path. His turkey gills went red as wrath And then he froze, as parsons can. ’The police will deal with you, my man.’ ’Not yet,’ said I, ’not yet they won’t; And now you’ll hear me, like or don’t. The English Church both is and was A subsidy of Caiaphas. I don’t believe in Prayer nor Bible, They’re lies all through, and you’re a libel, A libel on the Devil’s plan When first he miscreated man. You mumble through a formal code To get which martyrs burned and glowed. I look on martyrs as mistakes, But still they burned for it at stakes; Your only fire’s the jolly fire Where you can guzzle port with Squire, And back and praise his damned opinions About his temporal dominions. You let him give the man who digs, A filthy hut unfit for pigs, Without a well, without a drain, With mossy thatch that lets in rain, Without a ’lotment, ’less he rent it, And never meat, unless he scent it, But weekly doles of ’leven shilling To make a grown man strong and willing, To do the hardest work on earth And feed his wife when she gives birth, And feed his little children’s bones. I tell you, man, the Devil groans. With all your main and all your might You back what is against what’s right; You let the Squire do things like these, You back him in’t and give him ease, You take his hand, and drink his wine, And he’s a hog, but you’re a swine. For you take gold to teach God’s ways And teach man how to sing God’s praise.