The twinkling stars began to muster,
And glitter with their borrow'd lustre,
While sleep the wearied world reliev'd,
By counterfeiting death reviv'd.
His whipping penance, till the morn,
Our votary thought it best to' adjourn,
And not to carry on a work

Of such importance in the dark,
With erring haste, but rather stay,
And do't in the' open face of day;
And in the mean time go in quest
Of next retreat to take his rest.

THE ARGUMENT

The Knight and Squire in hot dispute,
Within an ace of falling out,
Are parted with a sudden fright
Of strange alarm, and stranger sight;
With which adventuring to stickle,
They're sent away in nasty pickle.

HUDIBRAS.

PART II. CANTO II.

"TIS strange how some men's tempers suit
(Like bawd and brandy) with dispute,
That for their own opinions stand fast
Only to have them claw'd and canvast;
That keep their consciences in cases,
As fiddlers do their crowds and bases;
Ne'er to be us'd, but when they're bent
To play a fit for argument:

Make true and false, unjust and just,
Of no use but to be discust;
Dispute, and set a paradox,

Like a straight boot, upon the stocks,
And stretch it more unmercifully

Than Helmont, Montaigne, White, or Tully.
So the' ancient Stoics, in their porch,

With fierce dispute maintain'd their church,
Beat out their brains in fight and study,
To prove that virtue is a body,
That bonum is an animal,

Made good with stout polemic brawl;
In which some hundreds on the place
Were slain outright, and many a face
Retrench'd of nose, and eyes, and beard,
To maintain what their sect averr'd.
All which the Knight and Squire, in wrath,
Had like to have suffer'd for their faith;