Sometimes the Air of Scandal to maintain,
Villains look from thy Lofty Loops in Vain:
But who can judge of Crimes by Punishment,
Where Parites Rule, and L[aw]s Subservient.
Justice with Change of Int'rest Learns to bow,
And what was Merit once, is Murther now:
Actions receive their Tincture from the Times,
And as they change are Vertues made or Crimes.
Thou art the State-Trap of the Law,
But neither can keep Knaves, nor Honest Men in Awe;
These are too hard'nd in Offence,
And those upheld by Innocence. (A Hymn to the Pillory, ll. 23-34)

Basic set up:

Defoe wrote this poem to expose just how hypocritical Augustan laws and politics were.

Defoe, poor guy, had the misfortune of being sentenced to the pillory. You know what that is: it's a device used for punishment, for the purpose of which a criminal's head and hands are put through holes in a wooden bar, and locked there. Why was Defoe sentenced to the pillory? Because he had published some dissenting religious views that the authorities didn't like, of course.

Defoe is saying that the poor suckers—like himself—who've been sentenced to the pillory have much more integrity than the society and the legal system that has condemned them to this punishment. According to Defoe, English society and the English legal system are both corrupt: in England, "justice" is actually about self "interest," laws are "subservient" to those in power, what is "vertue" one day is condemned as "crime" the next.

Okay, great, but how does this poem reflect the trend of neoclassicism? Simple: it's a "Pindaric ode." Pindar was a Greek poet known for his ceremonious poems, poems that usually celebrated a famous person. Pindaric odes are structured in a certain way, with a specific meter and rhyme scheme.

Here, Defoe adopts the structure of Pindar's poetry in order to write his own ode, or hymn, to the pillory. By adopting that classical style, the poem reflects a neoclassical perspective while at the same time giving dignity not to some famous person but to the people who've been pilloried.