Parties are much like fish, 't is said,— Blazed from our old Colonial comet! (As Wellington will be anon) We've Ellenborough's curls still left us;- And oft in thundering talk comes near him;— Except that, there the speaker nodded, And, here, 't is only those who hear him. Long, long, ye ringlets, on the soil Of that fat cranium may ye flourish, With plenty of Macassar oil, Through many a year your growth to nourish! And, ah, should Time too soon unsheath His barbarous shears such locks to sever, THE CHERRIES. A PARABLE.2 SEE those cherries, how they cover So, to guard our posts and pensions, Only certain knaves can get. Shall we then this net-work widen? Shall we stretch these sacred holes, Through which, ev'n already, slide in Lots of small dissenting souls? « God forbid!» old Testy crieth; « God forbid!» so echo I; Every ravenous bird that flieth Then would at our cherries fly. Ope but half an inch or so, And, behold, what bevies break in;— Here, some curst old Popish crow Pops his long and lickerish beak in: Here, sly Arians flock unnumber'd, Where there's pecking going on; That, for years, with ceaseless din, Hath reversed the starling's ditty, Singing out «< I can't get in.» « God forbid!» old Testy snivels; « God forbid !» I echo too; Rather may ten thousand devils Seize the whole voracious crew! If less costly fruit won't suit 'em, Hips and haws and such like berries, Curse the corm'rants! stone 'em, shoot 'em, Any thing-to save our cherries. STANZAS WRITTEN IN ANTICIPATION OF DEFEAT.' Go, seek for some abler defenders of wrong, If we must run the gauntlet through blood and expense; Or, Goths as ye are, in multitude strong, your Be content with success, and pretend not to sense. If the words of the wise and the gen'rous are vain, If Truth by the bow-string must yield up her breath, Let Mutes do the office,-and spare her the pain Of an Inglis or Tindal to talk her to death. Chain, persecute, plunder,-do all that you will,But save us, at least, the old womanly lore Of a Gloucester, who, dully prophetic of ill, Is, at once, the two instruments, AUGUR 2 and BORE. Bring legions of Squires-if they 'll only be mute— And array their thick heads against reason and right, Like the Roman of old, of historic repute,3 Who with droves of dumb animals carried the fight. Pour out, from each corner and hole of the Court, Your Bedchamber lordlings, your salaried slaves, Who, ripe for all job-work, no matter what sort, Have their consciences tack'd to their patents and staves. Catch all the small fry who, as Juvenal sings, Are the Treasury's creatures, wherever they swim,4 With all the base, time-serving toadies of Kings, Who, if Punch were the monarch, would worship ev'n him: And while, on the one side, each name of renown, During the discussion of the Catholic Question in the House of Commons last session. 2 This is more for the ear than the eye, as the carpenter's tool is spelt auger. 3 Fabius, who sent droves of bullocks against the enemy. Res Fisci est, abicumque natat.—Juvenal, Let Paddy but say, like the Gracchi's famed mother, And thus let your farce be enacted hereafter,- ODE TO THE WOODS AND FORESTS. BY ONE OF THE BOARD. LET other bards to groves repair, Where linnets strain their tuneful throats, Mine be the Woods and Forests, where The Treasury pours its sweeter notes. No whispering winds have charms for me, Nor zephyr's balmy sighs I ask; To raise the wind for Royalty Be all our sylvan zephyr's task! And 'stead of crystal brooks and floods, What Woods and Forests ought to be, His guinea-plant, his bullion-tree.' Nor see I why, some future day, When short of cash, we should not send Our Herries down-he knows the wayTo see if Woods in hell will lend. Long may ye flourish, sylvan haunts, Beneath whose « brunches of expense » Our gracious King gets all he wants,Except a little taste and sense. Long, in your golden shade reclined, Like him of fair Armida's bowers, May Wellington some wood-nymph find, To cheer his dozenth lustrum's hours: To rest from toil the Great Untaught, And soothe the pangs his warlike brain Must suffer, when, unused to thought, It tries to think, and-tries in vain. Oh long may Woods and Forests be Preserved, in all their teeming graces, To shelter Tory Bards, like me, Who take delight in Sylvan places! 1 STANZAS FROM THE BANKS OF THE SHANNON. Take back the virgin page.. No longer, dear Vesey, feel hurt and uneasy Ovid. For, lo, what a service we Irish have done thee:Thou now art a sheet of blank paper no more; By St Patrick, we 've scrawl'd such a lesson upon thee As never was scrawl'd upon foolscap before. Come,-on with your spectacles, noble Lord Duke, (Or O'Connell has green ones he haply would lend you,) Read Vesey all o'er-as you can't read a bookAnd improve by the lesson we bog-trotters send you; A lesson, in large Roman characters traced, Whose awful impressions from you and your kin Of blank-sheeted statesmen will ne'er be effaced,Unless, 'stead of paper, you 're sheer asses' skin. Shall I help you to construe it? ay, by the Gods, Could I risk a translation, you should have a rare one; But pen against sabre is desperate odds, And you, my Lord Duke (as you hinted once), wear one. Again and again I say, read Vesey o'er; You will find him worth all the old scrolls of papyrus, That Egypt e'er fill'd with nonsensical lore, Or the learned Champollion e'er wrote of, to tire us. All blank as he was, we 've return'd him on hand, Scribbled o'er with a warning to Princes and Dukes, Whose plain, simple drift if they won't understand, Though caress'd at St James's, they 're fit for St Luke's. Talk of leaves of the Sibyls!-more meaning convey'd is In one single leaf such as now we have spell'd on, Than e'er hath been utter'd by all the old ladies That ever yet spoke, from the Sibyls to Eldon. . IF AND PERHAPS.» On tidings of freedom! oh accents of hope! « If mutely the slave will endure and obey, May think (tender tyrants!) of loosening his chains.>> Wise «if» and « perhaps!»-precious salve for our wounds, If he, who would rule thus o'er manacled mutes, Could check the free spring-tide of Mind, that resounds, Even now, at his feet, like the sea at Canute's. But, no, 't is in vain-the grand impulse is given,Man knows his high Charter, and knowing will claim; And if ruin must follow where fetters are riven, Be theirs, who have forged them, the guilt and the shame. Written after hearing a celebrated speech in the House of Lords, June 10, 1828. " If the slave will be silent!»-vain Soldier, bewareThere is a dead silence the wrong'd may assume, When the feeling, sent back from the lips in despair, But clings round the heart with a deadlier gloom;When the blush, that long burn'd on the suppliant's cheek, Gives place to th' avenger's pale, resolute hue; And the tongue, that once threaten'd, disdaining to speak, Consigns to the arm the high office-to do. If men, in that silence, should think of the hour, To the despot on land and the foe on the flood; That hour, when a Voice had come forth from the west, To the slave bringing hopes, to the tyrant alarms; And a lesson, long look'd for, was taught the opprest, That kings are as dust before freemen in arms! If, awfuller still, the mute slave should recall That dream of his boyhood, when Freedom's sweet day At length seem'd to break through a long night of thrall, And Union and Hope went abroad in its ray ;If Fancy should tell him, that Day-spring of Good, Though swiftly its light died away from his chain, Though darkly it set in a nation's best blood, Now wants but invoking to shine out again;If-if, I say-breathings like these should come o'er The chords of remembrance, and thrill as they come, Then, perhaps,-ay, perhaps—but I dare not say Ev'n now I feel the coming light,— By geese (we read in history) Old Rome was saved from ill; And now, to quills of geese, we see Old Rome indebted still. Write on, write on, etc. Write, write, ye Peers, nor stoop to style, yore, you, My creed, I need not tell is To whom no harlot comes amiss, Save Her of Babylon;' «And when we 're at a loss for words, If laughing reasoners flout us, For lack of sense we 'll draw our swordsThe sole things sharp about us. » « Dear bold Dragoon!» the Bishop said, <<'T is true for war thou art meant; And reasoning (bless that dandy head!) Is not in thy department. << So leave the argument to meAnd, when my holy labour Hath lit the fires of bigotry, Thou 'It poke them with thy sabre. « From pulpit and from sentry-box We'll make our joint attacks, I, at the head of my cassocks, THE DAY-DREAM.' THEY both were hush'd, the voice, the chords;- My spell-bound memory brought away; Like echoes of some broken strain;Links of a sweetness lost in air, That nothing now could join again. Ev'n these, too, ere the morning, fled; And, though the charm still linger'd on That o'er each sense her song had shed, The song itself was faded, gone ;— Gone, like the thoughts that once were ours, On summer days, ere youth had set; Thoughts bright, we know, as summer flowers, Though what they were, we now forget. In vain, with hints from other strains, In that half-waking mood, when dreams To the full truth of day-light's beams, A face, the very face, methought, From which had breathed, as from a shrine Of song and soul, the notes I sought,Came with its music close to mine; And sung the long-lost measure o'er, Each note and word, with every tone All perfect, all again my own. Thus strangely caught, escape again; So well as now I knew this strain. And oft, when Memory's wondrous spell I sing this lady's song, and tell TO LORD BYRON, ON READING HIS STANZAS ON THE SILVER FOOT OF A SKULL WHY hast thou bound around, with silver rim, And accounts have just reach'd us that one Mr Galt And sets all the nine parts of speech at defiance. And who he 'll next murder the Lord only knows! Wednesday Evening. Since our last, matters, luckily, look more sereneThough the rebel, 't is stated, to aid his defection, Has seized a great Powder-no-Puff Magazine, And th' explosions are dreadful in every direction. What his meaning exactly is, nobody knows, As he talks (in a strain of intense botheration) Of lyrical «< ichor,»« gelatinous » prose, " And a mixture called «< amber immortalization.»3 Now he raves of a bard, he once happen'd to meet, Seated high among rattlings » and « churming » a sonnet,4 Now talks of a Mystery, wrapp'd in a sheet, We shudder in tracing these terrible lines- For whate'er may be guess'd of Galt's secret designs, That they 're all anti-English no Christian can doubt. That dark diseased ichor, which coloured his effusions. GALT's Life of Byron. 2. That gelatinous character of their effusions. » — Id. 3. The poetical embalmment, or rather amber immortalization. -Id. 4. Sitting amidst the shrouds and rattlings, churming an inarti In these stanzas I have done little more than relate a fact in verse; and the lady, whose singing gave rise to this curious in-culate melody.»-id. stance of the power of memory in sleep, is Mrs Robert Arkwright. 5. He was a mystery in a winding-sheet, crowned with a halo.» -Id. Attributed Pieces. [The following are very generally attributed to Mr Moore, and though not acknowledged by that gentleman, their wit, grace, and spirit, sufficiently attest the truth of the report, and sanction their insertion in a complete collection of his Poetical Works.] A VOICE FROM MARATHON. O FOR a voice, as loud as that of Fame, Ye who have hearts to strike a single blow, Ye who have hands to immolate one foe, From the dim fields of Asphodel beneath, Of those who love their country still in death,- These are not hands for earthly wringing-these!- Yet here I stand, untomb'd MILTIADES, The feverish war-drum mingles with the fife And Moslem strikes at liberty and life, For both, strike harder ye! Hark! how Citharon with his earthquake voice While Pluto bars, against the riving noise, Athenè, tiptoe on her crumbling dome, The stone first brought, his living tomb to close, Matrons of Greece! will ye do less for foes Than she did for her child? Let boyhood strike!—let every rank and age Strike deep-strike home-strike through! I teach but what the Phrygian taught of old- Hallow'd in life, in death itself, is he A light, a star, to all futurity- O countrymen! O countrymen! once more- By Heaven-by sacred Hades-I implore- THE GHOST OF MILTIADES. Ah quoties dubius scriptis exarsit amator!-OVID. THE ghost of Miltiades came at night, The Benthamite, yawning, left his bed- And oh! 't was a sight for the ghost to see, |