Such doctrines in the Pigeon-house were taught: You need not ask how wondrously they wrought: But sure the common cry was all for these, Whose life and precepts both encouraged ease. Yet fearing those alluring baits might fail, And holy deeds o'er all their arts prevail; 1040 (For vice, though frontless, and of harden'd face, Is daunted at the sight of awful grace;) An hideous figure of their foes they drew, Nor lines, nor looks, nor shades, nor colours true; And this grotesque design exposed to public view. One would have thought it some Egyptian piece, With garden-gods, and barking deities, More thick than Ptolemy has stuck the skies. All so perverse a draught, so far unlike, It was no libel where it meant to strike. 1050 Yet still the daubing pleased, and great and small, To view the monster, crowded Pigeon Hall. There Chanticleer was drawn upon his knees Adoring shrines, and stocks of sainted trees: And by him, a misshapen, ugly race; The curse of God was seen on every face: No Holland emblem could that malice mend, But still the worse the look, the fitter for a fiend. The master of the farm, displeased to find So much of rancour in so mild a kind, 1060 Enquired into the cause, and came to know, The passive Church had struck the foremost blow; With groundless fears and jealousies possess'd, As if this troublesome intruding guest Would drive the birds of Venus from their nest; A deed his inborn equity abhorr'd; But Interest will not trust, though God should plight his word. A law,[135] the source of many future harms, Had banish'd all the poultry from the farms; With loss of life, if any should be found 1070 To crow or peck on this forbidden ground. That bloody statute chiefly was design'd For Chanticleer the white, of clergy kind; But after-malice did not long forget The lay that wore the robe and coronet. For them, for their inferiors and allies, Their foes a deadly Shibboleth devise: By which unrighteously it was decreed, That none to trust or profit should succeed, Who would not swallow first a poisonous wicked weed:[136] 1080 Or that, to which old Socrates was cursed, Or henbane juice to swell them till they burst. The patron (as in reason) thought it hard To see this inquisition in his yard, By which the Sovereign was of subjects' use debarr'd. All gentle means he tried, which might withdraw The effects of so unnatural a law: But still the Dove-house obstinately stood Deaf to their own and to their neighbours' good; And which was worse, if any worse could be, 1090 Repented of their boasted loyalty: Now made the champions of a cruel cause. And drunk with fumes of popular applause; For those whom God to ruin has design'd, He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.