Persecution

—To subdue th' unconquerable mind, To make one reason have the same effect Upon all apprehensions; to force this Or that man to think just as I do; Impossible! unless souls, which differ Like human faces, were alike in all.

A fury crawl'd from out her horrid cell; The bloodiest minister of death and hell. Huge full-gorg'd snakes on her lean shoulders hung, And death's dark courts with their loud hissing rung. Her teeth and claws were iron, and her breath, Like subterranean damps, gave present death. Flames, worse than hell's, shot from her bloody eyes, And fire and sword eternally she cries. No certain shape, no figure regular, No limbs distinct in th' odious fiend appear. Her squalid bloated belly did arise, Swoln with black gore, to a prodigious size, Distended vastly by a mighty flood Of slaughter'd saints, and constant martyrs' blood. Part stood out prominent, but part fell down, And, in a swagging heap, lay wall'wing on the ground. Horror, till now the ugliest shape esteem'd, So much out-done, a harmless figure seem'd. Envy, and hate, and malice blush'd to see Themselves eclips'd by such deformity. Her fev'rish thirst drinks down a sea of blood, Not of the impious, but the just and good; 'Gainst whom she burns with unextinguish'd rage, Nor can th' exhausted world her wrath assuage.