These are the chief; to number o'er the rest, And stand, like Adam, naming every beast, Were weary work; nor will the muse describe A slimy-born and sun-begotten tribe; Who, far from steeples and their sacred sound, In fields their sullen conventicles found.[114] These gross, half-animated, lumps I leave; Nor can I think what thoughts they can conceive. But if they think at all, 'tis sure no higher Than matter, put in motion, may aspire; Souls that can scarce ferment their mass of clay; } So drossy, so divisible are they, } As would but serve pure bodies for allay; } Such souls as shards produce, such beetle things As only buz to heaven with evening wings; Strike in the dark, offending but by chance, Such are the blindfold blows of ignorance. They know not beings, and but hate a name; To them the Hind and Panther are the same. The Panther, sure the noblest, next the Hind, And fairest creature of the spotted kind; Oh, could her in-born stains be washed away, She were too good to be a beast of prey! How can I praise, or blame, and not offend, Or how divide the frailty from the friend? Her faults and virtues lie so mixed, that she Nor wholly stands condemned, nor wholly free. Then, like her injured Lion, let me speak; He cannot bend her, and he would not break. Unkind already, and estranged in part, The Wolf begins to share her wandering heart. Though unpolluted yet with actual ill, She half commits who sins but in her will. If, as our dreaming platonists report, There could be spirits of a middle sort, Too black for heaven, and yet too white for hell, Who just dropt half-way down, nor lower fell;[115] So poised, so gently she descends from high, It seems a soft dismission from the sky. Her house not ancient, whatsoe'er pretence Her clergy-heralds make in her defence; A second century not half-way run, Since the new honours of her blood begun. A lion, old, obscene, and furious made By lust, compressed her mother in a shade; Then, by a left-hand marriage, weds the dame, Covering adultery with a specious name;[116] So schism begot; and sacrilege and she, A well matched pair, got graceless heresy. God's and kings' rebels have the same good cause, To trample down divine and human laws; Both would be called reformers, and their hate Alike destructive both to church and state. The fruit proclaims the plant; a lawless prince } By luxury reformed incontinence; } By ruins, charity; by riots, abstinence. } Confessions, fasts, and penance set aside, } Oh with what ease we follow such a guide, } Where souls are starved, and senses gratified! } Where marriage-pleasures midnight prayer supply, } And mattin bells, a melancholy cry, }