Permit me then to raise my style,
And sweetly moralize a-while. 
  Thee, bounteous goddess Cloacine,
To temples why do we confine? 
Forbid in open air to breathe,
Why are thine altars fix’d beneath? 
When Saturn ruled the skies alone,
(That golden age to gold unknown,)
This earthly globe, to thee assign’d,
Received the gifts of all mankind. 
Ten thousand altars smoking round,
Were built to thee with offerings crown’d;
And here thy daily votaries placed
Their sacrifice with zeal and haste: 
The margin of a purling stream
Sent up to thee a grateful steam;
Though sometimes thou wert pleased to wink,
If Naiads swept them from the brink: 
Or where appointing lovers rove,
The shelter of a shady grove;
Or offer’d in some flowery vale,
Were wafted by a gentle gale,
There many a flower abstersive grew,
Thy favourite flowers of yellow hue;
The crocus and the daffodil,
The cowslip soft, and sweet jonquil. 
  But when at last usurping Jove
Old Saturn from his empire drove,
Then gluttony, with greasy paws
Her napkin pinn’d up to her jaws,
With watery chops, and wagging chin,
Braced like a drum her oily skin;
Wedged in a spacious elbow-chair,
And on her plate a treble share,
As if she ne’er could have enough,
Taught harmless man to cram and stuff. 
She sent her priests in wooden shoes
From haughty Gaul to make ragouts;
Instead of wholesome bread and cheese,
To dress their soups and fricassees;
And, for our home-bred British cheer,
Botargo, catsup, and caviare. 
  This bloated harpy, sprung from hell,
Confined thee, goddess, to a cell: 
Sprung from her womb that impious line,
Contemners of thy rites divine. 
First, lolling Sloth, in woollen cap,
Taking her after-dinner nap: 
Pale Dropsy, with a sallow face,
Her belly burst, and slow her pace: 
And lordly Gout, wrapt up in fur,
And wheezing Asthma, loth to stir: 
Voluptuous Ease, the child of wealth,
Infecting thus our hearts by stealth. 
None seek thee now in open air,
To thee no verdant altars rear;
But, in their cells and vaults obscene,
Present a sacrifice unclean;
From whence unsavoury vapours rose,
Offensive to thy nicer nose. 
Ah! who, in our degenerate days,
As nature prompts, his offering pays? 
Here nature never difference made
Between the sceptre and the spade. 
  Ye great ones, why will ye disdain
To pay your tribute on the plain? 
Why will you place in lazy pride
Your altars near your couches’ side: 
When from the homeliest earthen ware
Are sent up offerings more sincere,
Than where the haughty duchess locks
Her silver vase in cedar box? 
  Yet some devotion still remains
Among our harmless northern swains,
Whose offerings, placed in golden ranks,
Adorn our crystal rivers’ banks;
Nor seldom grace the flowery downs,