I am blamed for the pardon of [Ezra Hervey] Heywood, convicted in Boston of sending obscene matter through the mails. A man guilty... of circulating, writing, or publishing obscene books--books intended or calculated to corrupt the young--would find no favor with me.... I think the real objection to Heywood's act is ... that he was on the wrong side of the question ... as to marriage.... But it is no crime by the laws of the United States to advocate the abolition of marriage. In this case the writings were objectionable but were not obscene, lascivious, lewd, or corrupting in the criminal sense.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
but when lust By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,... But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, Lets in defilement to the inward parts, The soul grows clotted by contagion, Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite loose The divine property of her first being.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As when a prowling wolf, Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey,... Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve, In hurdled cotes amid the field secure, Leaps o'er the fence with ease into the fold; Or as a thief, bent to unhoard the cash Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors, Cross-barred and bolted fast, fear no assault, In at the window climbs, or o'er the tiles; So clomb this first grand Thief into God's fold: So since into his Church lewd hirelings climb. Thence up he flew, and on the Tree of Life, The middle tree and highest there that grew, Sat like a cormorant; yet not true life Thereby regained, but say devising death To them who lived; nor on the virtue thought Of that life-giving plant, but only used For prospect what, well used, had been the pledge Of immortality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Less smooth than her Skin and less white than her breast Was this pollisht stone beneath which she lyes prest... Stop, Reader, and Sigh while thou thinkst on the rest
With a just trim of Virtue her Soul was endu'd Not affectedly Pious nor secretly lewd, She cut even between the Cocquet and the Prude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »