77
Rawboned, he onward strode with grace
Behind, and reached the market place.
Thus by the grace of gin and vat, sir,
Lo! Blasio master of the piazza:
Planted the tub evangelistic,
Sir Blasio-Cyclops-Calvinistic
High o’er the hoops upreared tremendous,
Ready to hell or heaven to send us,
And pouring forth, without palaver,
Doctrinal scoria, flames and lava,
Gape people, pavements, walls aghast
As Blasio’s rhetoric round is cast.
Blasting and withering in Saharas
Of eloquence popes, priests, tiaras,
Tats, scarlet, tinsel, mariolatries,
Indulgences, Antichrists, idolatries,
Popes, pope’s toes, tonsures, nuns, worm-eaten
Confessionals, with brass plates beaten
Fine and pierced large for whispered sins
To slip through easily from chins
In lace and powder, rouge and pins;
In fact, his lightnings fulminated
All the frayed, tawdry properties
Of Popery’s puppet-show theatrical;
Laid bare its shams, exposed its lies,
Its frauds to a palanca rated,
Proving how Jesuits’ and priests’ fat tricks all
Who, haltered ’neath its crumbling gable,
Munch mouldy oats in popery’s stable.
Far off, awhile, the folk in awe,
Spellbound at what they heard and saw,
Huddled together and, perplexed,
