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The World’s Wit and Humor: An Encyclopedia in 15 Volumes. 1906.

Thomas Percy (1729–1811)

The Distracted Puritan

AM I mad, oh, noble Festus,

When zeal and godly knowledge

Have put me in hope

To deal with the Pope,

As well as the best in the college?

Boldly I preach, hate a cross, hate a surplice,

Mitres, copes, and rochets;

Come, hear me pray nine times a day,

And fill your heads with crotchets.

In the house of pure Emanuel

I had my education,

Where my friends surmise

I dazel’d my eyes

With the sight of revelation.

They bound me like a bedlam,

They lash’d my four poor quarters;

Whilst this I endure,

Faith makes me sure

To be one of Foxe’s martyrs.

These injuries I suffer

Through antichrist’s perswasion:

Take off this chain,

Neither Rome nor Spain

Can resist my strong invasion.

Of the beast’s ten horns (God bless us!)

I have knock’d off three already;

If they let me alone

I’ll leave him none:

But they say I am too heady.

When I sack’d the seven-hill’d city,

I met the great red dragon;

I kept him aloof

With the armour of proof,

Though here I have never a rag on.

With a fiery sword and target,

There fought I with this monster:

But the sons of pride

My zeal deride,

And all my deeds misconster.

I have seen two in a vision

With a flying book between them.

I have been in despair

Five times in a year,

And been cur’d by reading Greenham.

I observ’d in Perkins’ tables

The black line of damnation;

Those crooked veins

So stuck in my brains,

That I fear’d my reprobation.

In the holy tongue of Canaan

I plac’d my chiefest pleasure;

Till I prick’d my foot

With an Hebrew root,

That I bled beyond all measure.

I appear’d before the archbishop,

And all the high commission;

I gave him no grace,

But told him to his face,

That he favour’d superstition.

Boldly I preach, hate a cross, hate a surplice,

Mitres, copes, and rochets;

Come hear me pray nine times a day,

And fill your heads with crotchets.