Some call their monarchs sons of Saturn,
For which they bring a modern pattern;
Because they might have heard of one,[1]
Who often long'd to eat his son;
But this I think will not go down,
For here the father kept his crown.
Why, then, appoint him son of Jove,
Who met his mother in a grove;
To this we freely shall consent,
Well knowing what the poets meant;
And in their sense, 'twixt me and you,
It may be literally true.[2]
Next, as the laws of verse require,
He must be greater than his sire;
For Jove, as every schoolboy knows,
Was able Saturn to depose;
And sure no Christian poet breathing
Would be more scrupulous than a Heathen;
Or, if to blasphemy it tends.
That's but a trifle among friends.
Your hero now another Mars is,
Makes mighty armies turn their a--s:
Behold his glittering falchion mow
Whole squadrons at a single blow;
While Victory, with wings outspread,
Flies, like an eagle, o'er his head;
His milk-white steed upon its haunches,
Or pawing into dead men's paunches;
As Overton has drawn his sire,
Still seen o'er many an alehouse fire.
Then from his arm hoarse thunder rolls,
As loud as fifty mustard bowls;
For thunder still his arm supplies,
And lightning always in his eyes.
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