Though hard their fare, at evening, and at morn, 1000
  A cruise of water and an ear of corn;
  Yet still they grudged that modicum, and thought
  A sheaf in every single grain was brought. 
  Fain would they filch that little food away,
  While unrestrain’d those happy gluttons prey. 
  And much they grieved to see so nigh their hall,
  The bird that warn’d St Peter of his fall;
  That he should raise his mitred crest on high,
  And clap his wings, and call his family
  To sacred rites; and vex the ethereal powers 1010
  With midnight matins at uncivil hours: 
  Nay more, his quiet neighbours should molest,
  Just in the sweetness of their morning rest. 
  Beast of a bird, supinely when he might
  Lie snug and sleep, to rise before the light! 
  What if his dull forefathers used that cry,
  Could he not let a bad example die? 
  The world was fallen into an easier way;
  This age knew better than to fast and pray. 
  Good sense in sacred worship would appear 1020
  So to begin, as they might end the year. 
  Such feats in former times had wrought the falls
  Of crowing Chanticleers[133] in cloister’d walls. 
  Expell’d for this, and for their lands, they fled;
  And sister Partlet,[134] with her hooded head,
  Was hooted hence, because she would not pray a-bed. 
  The way to win the restive world to God,
  Was to lay by the disciplining rod,
  Unnatural fasts, and foreign forms of prayer: 
  Religion frights us with a mien severe. 1030
  ’Tis prudence to reform her into ease,
  And put her in undress to make her please;
  A lively faith will bear aloft the mind,
  And leave the luggage of good works behind.

   Such doctrines in the Pigeon-house were taught: 
  You need not ask how wondrously they wrought: 
  But sure the common cry was all for these,
  Whose life and precepts both encouraged ease. 
  Yet fearing those alluring baits might fail,
  And holy deeds o’er all their arts prevail; 1040
  (For vice, though frontless, and of harden’d face,
  Is daunted at the sight of awful grace;)
  An hideous figure of their foes they drew,
  Nor lines, nor looks, nor shades, nor colours true;
  And this grotesque design exposed to public view. 
  One would have thought it some Egyptian piece,
  With garden-gods, and barking deities,
  More thick than Ptolemy has stuck the skies. 
  All so perverse a draught, so far unlike,
  It was no libel where it meant to strike. 1050
  Yet still the daubing pleased, and great and small,
  To view the monster, crowded Pigeon Hall. 
  There Chanticleer was drawn upon his knees
  Adoring shrines, and stocks of sainted trees: 
  And by him, a misshapen, ugly race;
  The curse of God was seen on every face: 
  No Holland emblem could that malice mend,
  But still the worse the look, the fitter for a fiend.