A Roman Prelate of 1519
... His hungry congregation waits in vain,
Wishing he’d come the Gospel to explain,
Begin, or rather end, his dull tho’ noisy strain.
At last he comes, deep-crimson’d o’er his face,
A certain token of unlettered grace;
He mounts, the pulpit crackles with his weight,
His awful eyebrows the most distant threat;
Against his brethren he exclaims aloud
That they are too luxurious in their food,
In taverns more than churches take delight,
Feast on fat capons; quaff the livelong night;
While, could you rummage his own private cell,
No noble’s larder e’er was stuffed so well.
Let me have books those moments to beguile,
When the rich prelate, in his haughty style,
Roars to his porter, “Here, let who will come,
Be sure you tell them I am not at home.”
So monks, carousing at their favourite meals,
Silence the interrupting sound of bells.
“Sir,” should I say (for Sir’s the proper word
Even at a cobbler’s stall, or tailor’s board),
“Good sir,” though to a tattered Swiss, “I pray,
May I not see His Eminence to-day?”
“No sproka to my Maister bater goud,
You go your lodgèe, come as when you coud.”4
“Sir, be so kind at least to let him know
That Lewis Ariosto is below.”
He answers that his Rev’rence would not see
St Paul himself, though on an embassy....
Lodovico Ariosto (1474–1533).