Upon the Cutting of Sir John Coventry's Nose.

I SING a woeful ditty
Of a wound that long will smart-a;
And given (more is the pity)
In the realm of Magna Charta.
Youth, youth, thou hadst better been slain by the foes,
Than live to be hanged for cutting a nose.

Our great King, Charles the Second,
So flippant of treasure and moisture,
Stooped from his Queen infecund
To a wench of orange and oyster;
And for sweet variety, thought it expedient
To ingender Don Johns on Nell the comedian.

The lecherous vainglory
Of being Joined by a Majesty,
Mounted up to such a story
This bitchinton travesty,
That to equal her lover, this baggage must dare
To be Helen the second, the cause of a war.

And he our amorous Jove,
While she lay dry b— under,
To repair the defects of his love,
Did lend her his lightning and thunder;
And for one night prostitutes to her commands
His Monmouth, his life-guard, O'Bryan, and Sandys.

And now the romance of the French,
And now the need of a Navy,
Was dwindled all to a wench,
And amo, amas, amavi.
Nay, farewell the subsidies, so she may cloven-try
In a female revenge the nostrils of Coventry.

O ye Haymarket hectors,
How were you thus charmed,
To turn the base dissectors
Of one poor nose unarmed?
Unfit to wear sword, or follow the trumpet,
That would brandish a knife at the word of a strumpet.

But was it not ungrateful
In Monmouth and Carlo,
To contrive a thing so hateful,
The sons of Mary and Barlo;
And since the kind world dispensed with their mothers,
Might they not well have spared the noses of others?

Beware now, ye Parliamenteers,
How each of his tongue disposes;
Bab May in the Commons, Charles Rex in the Peers,
Sit telling your fates by your noses;
And predestine at mention of every slut
Which nose shall continue, and which shall be cut.

But if the sister of Rose
Be an whore so anointed,
That thus the Parliament's nose
Must for her be disjointed;
When you once come to name the prerogative whore,
How the bullets will whistle, and cannons will roar!