Next housed this Soul a wolf's yet unborn whelp, Till the best midwife, Nature, gave it help To issue: it could kill as soon as go. Abel, as white and mild as his sheep were, (Who, in that trade, of church and kingdoms there Was the first type,) was still infested so With this wolf, that it bred his loss and woe; And yet his bitch, his sentinel, attends The flock so near, so well warns and defends, That the wolf, hopeless else, to corrupt her intends.
He took a course, which since successfully Great men have often taken, to espy The counsels, or to break the plots, of foes; To Abel's tent he stealeth in the dark, On whose skirts the bitch slept: ere she could bark, Attached her with strait gripes, yet he called those Embracements of love: to love's work he goes, Where deeds move more than words; nor doth she show, Nor much resist, no needs he straiten so His prey, for were she loose she would not bark nor go.
He hath engaged her; his she wholly bides; Who not her own, none other's secrets hides. If to the flock he come, and Abel there, She feigns hoarse barkings, but she biteth not! Her faith is quite, but not her love forgot. At last a trap, of which some everywhere Abel had placed, ends all his loss and fear By the wolf's death; and now just time it was That a quick Soul should give life to that mass Of blood in Abel's bitch, and thither this did pass.
Some have their wives, their sisters some begot, But in the lives of emperors you shall not Read of a lust the which may equal this: This wolf begot himself, and finished What he began alive when he was dead. Son to himself, and father too, he is A riding lust, for which schoolmen would miss A proper name. The whelp of both these lay In Abel's tent, and with soft Moaba, His sister, being young, it used to sport and play.
He soon for her too harsh and churlish grew, And Abel (the dam dead) would use this new For the field; being of two kinds thus made, He, as his dam, from sheep drove wolves away, And, as his sire, he made them his own prey. Five years he lived, and cozened with his trade, Then, hopeless that his faults were hid, betrayed Himself by flight, and by all followed, From dogs a wolf, from wolves a dog, he fled, And, like a spy, to both sides false, he perished.