On Glenriddells Fox Breaking His Chain（2 / 2）

with many rueful, bloody stories

of tyrants, jacobites, and tories:

from liberty how angels fell,

that now are galley-slaves in hell;

how nimrod first the trade began

of binding slavery's chains on man;

how fell semiramis—god damn her!

did first, with sacrilegious hammer,

(all ills till then were trivial matters)

for man dethron'd forge hen-peck fetters;

how xerxes, that abandoned tory,

thought cutting throats was reaping glory,

until the stubborn whigs of sparta

taught him great nature's magna charta;

how mighty rome her fiat hurl'd

resistless o'er a bowing world,

and, kinder than they did desire,

polish'd mankind with sword and fire;

with much, too tedious to relate,

of ancient and of modern date,

but ending still, how billy pitt

(unlucky boy!) with wicked wit,

has gagg'd old britain, drain'd her coffer,

as butchers bind and bleed a heifer,

thus wily reynard by degrees,

in kennel listening at his ease,

suck'd in a mighty stock of knowledge,

as much as some folks at a college;

knew britain's rights and constitution,

her aggrandisement, diminution,

how fortune wrought us good from evil;

let no man, then, despise the devil,

as who should say, 'i never can need him,'

since we to scoundrels owe our freedom.