Sir, Though-I Thank God for it-I do Hate by John Donne

Sir, though-I thank God for it-I do hate / Perfectly all this town, yet there's one state / In all ill things so excellently best, / That hate toward them breeds pity towards the rest. / Though poetry indeed be such a sin / As I think that brings dearth and Spaniards in; / Though like the pestilence and old-fashion'd love, / Riddlingly it catch men, and doth remove / Never, till it be starved out, yet their state / Is poor, disarm'd, like Papists, not worth hate. / One-like a wretch, which at bar judged as dead / Yet prompts him, which stands next and cannot read, / And saves his life-gives idiot actors means, / Starving himself, to live by his labour'd scenes. / As in some organ, puppets dance above / And bellows pant below, which them do move, / One would move love by rhythms; but witchcraft's charms / Bring not now their old fears, nor their old harms. / Rams and slings now are silly battery; / Pistolets are the best artillery. / And they who write to lords, rewards to get, / Are they not like singers at doors for meat? / And they who write, because all write, have still / That excuse for writing, and for writing ill. / But he is worst, who (beggarly) doth chaw / Others' wits' fruits, and in his ravenous maw / Rankly digested, doth those things out-spew, / As his own things; and they're his own, 'tis true; / For if one eat my meat, though it be known / The meat was mine, th' excrement is his own. / But these do me no harm, nor they which use / To outdo -- -, and out-usure Jews, / To out-drink the sea, to out-swear the -- -, / Who with sins of all kinds as familiar be / As confessors, and for whose sinful sake / Schoolmen new tenements in hell must make, / Whose strange sins canonists could hardly tell / In which commandment's large receipt they dwel. / But these punish themselves. The insolence / Of Coscus only breeds my just offence, / Whom time-which rots all, and makes botches pox, / And plodding on, must make a calf an ox- / Hath made a lawyer; which was, alas, of late / But scarce a poet; jollier of this state, / Than are new beneficed ministers, he throws, / Like nets or lime-twigs, wheresoe'er he goes, / His title of barrister on every wench, / And wooes in language of the pleas and bench. / "A motion, lady"-speak Coscus-"I have been / In love e'er since tricesimo of the Queen, / Continual claims I've made, injunctions got, / To stay my rival's suit, that he should not / Proceed. "-Spare me. -"In Hilary term I went, / You said, if I return'd next 'size in Lent, / I should be in remitter of your grace; / In th' interim my letters should take place / Of affidavits. " Words, words, which would tear / The tender labyrinth of a soft maid's ear, / More, more than ten Sclavonians scolding, more / Than when winds in our ruin'd abbeys roar. / When sick with poetry, and possess'd with Muse / Thou wast, and mad, I hoped; but men, which choose / Law-practice for mere gain, bold soul[s] repute / Worse than embrothell'd strumpets, prostitute. / Now like an owl-like watchman, he must walk / His hand still at a bill, now he must talk / Idly, like prisoners, which whole months will swear, / The only suretyship hath brought them there, / And to every suitor lie in everything, / Like a king's favourite, or like a king; / Like a wedge in a block, wring to the bar, / Bearing like asses, and more shameless far / Than carted whores; lie to the grave judge, for / Bastardy 'bounds not in king's titles, nor / Simony and sodomy in churchmen's lives, / As these things do in him; by these he thrives. / Shortly, as the sea, he'll compass all the land, / From Scots to Wight, from Mount to Dover strand; / And spying heirs melting with luxury, / Satan will not joy at their sins, as he. / For as a thrifty wench scrapes kitchen stuff, / And barrelling the droppings, and the snuff / Of wasting candles, which in thirty year / (Relicly kept) perchance buys wedding-gear; / Piecemeal he gets lands, and spends as much time / Wringing each acre, as men pulling prime. / In parchment then, large as his fields, he draws / Assurances, big as gloss'd civil laws, / So huge, that men, in our time's forwardness, / Are Fathers of the church for writing less. / These he writes not, nor for these written pays; / Therefore spares no length-as in those first days / When Luther was profess'd, he did desire / Short pater nosters, saying as a friar / Each day his beads, but having left those laws, / Adds to Christ's prayer the Power and Glory clause. / But when he sells or changes land, he impairs / His writings, and, unwatch'd, leaves out, ses heires, / As slyly as any commenter goes by / Hard words, or sense; or, in divinity, / As controverters in vouch'd texts leave out / Shrewd words, which might against them clear the doubt. / Where are those spread woods which clothed heretofore / Those bought lands? not built, nor burnt within door. / Where the old landlord's troops, and alms? In halls / Carthusian fasts, and fulsome Bacchanals / Equally I hate. Mean's blest; in rich men's homes / I bid kill some beasts, but no hecatombs; / None starve, none surfeit so. But oh, we allow / Good works, as good, but out of fashion now, / Like old rich wardrobes. But my words none draws / Within the vast reach of th' huge statute's jaws.