Parties are much like fish, 't is said,—
The tail directs them, not the head;
Then, how could any party fail,
That steer'd its course by Bathurst's tail?
Not Murat's plume, through Wagram's fight,
E'er shed such guiding glories from it,
As erst, in all true Tories' sight,

Blazed from our old Colonial comet!
If you, my Lord, a Bashaw were,

(As Wellington will be anon)
Thou mightst have had a tail to spare;
But no, alas! thou hadst but one,
And that-like Troy, or Babylon,
A tale of other times-is gone!
Yet-weep ye not, ye Tories true,—
Fate has not yet of all bereft us;
Though thus deprived of Bathurst's queue,

We've Ellenborough's curls still left us;-
Sweet curls, from which young Love, so vicious,
His shots, as from nine-pounders, issues;
Grand, glorious curls, which, in debate,
Surcharged with all a nation's fate,
His Lordship shakes, as Homer's God did,'

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,
Still dear to Tories, even in death,
Their last loved relics we 'll bequeath,
A hair-loom to our sons for ever.

THE CHERRIES.

A PARABLE.2

SEE those cherries, how they cover
Yonder sunny garden-wall;—
Had they not that net-work over,
Thieving birds would eat them all.

So, to guard our posts and pensions,
Ancient sages wove a net,
Through whose holes, of small dimensions,

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,
And Socinians, slim and spare,
Who, with small belief encumber'd,
Ship in easy any where:-
Methodists, of birds the aptest,

Where there's pecking going on;
And that water-fowl, the Baptist,—
All would share our fruits anon:
Ev'ry bird, of ev'ry city,

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,
That illumines and blesses our age is combined;
While the Foxes, the Pitts, and the Cannings look down,
And drop o'er the cause their rich mantles of Mind;
Let bold Paddy Holmes show his troops on the other,
And, counting of noses the quantum desired,

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,
<< Come forward, my jewels »'t is all that 's re-
quired.

And thus let your farce be enacted hereafter,-
Thus honestly persecute, outlaw, and chain;
But spare ev'n your victims the torture of laughter,
And never, oh never, try reasoning again!

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,
And all such vulgar irrigation,
Let Gallic rhino through our Woods
Divert its «< course of liquid-ation.>>
Ah, surely, Virgil knew full well

What Woods and Forests ought to be,
When, sly, he introduced in Hell

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..
Moore's Irish Melodies.

No longer, dear Vesey, feel hurt and uneasy
At hearing it said by thy Treasury brother,
That thou art a sheet of blank paper, my Vesey,
And he, the dear innocent placeman, another.
Called by Virgil, botanically, species auri frondentis.»
Tu facis, ut silvas, ut amem loca

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!
Waft, waft them, ye zephyrs, to Erin's blue sea,
And refresh with their sounds every son of the Pope,
From Dingle-a-cooch to far Donaghadee.

« If mutely the slave will endure and obey,
Nor clanking his fetters, nor breathing his pains,
His masters, perhaps, at some far distant day,

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,
When proudly their fathers in panoply stood,
Presenting, alike, a bold front-work of power

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,—
Ev'n now, could Folly lure
My Lord Mountcashel, too, to write,
Emancipation 's sure.

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,
Nor beat for sense about,-
Things, little worth a Noble's while,
You're better far without.
Oh ne'er, since asses spoke of

yore,

you,

My creed, I need not tell is
Like that of Wellington,

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;-
I heard but once that witching lay;
And few the notes, and few the words,

My spell-bound memory brought away;
Traces, remember'd here and there,

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,
I woo'd this truant air to come,-
As birds are taught, on eastern plains,
To lure their wilder kindred home.
In vain: the song that Sappho gave,
In dying, to the mournful sea,
Not muter slept beneath the wave
Than this within my memory.
At length, one morning, as I lay

In that half-waking mood, when dreams
Unwillingly at last give way

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
And look, that lent it life before,

All perfect, all again my own.
Like parted souls, when, 'mid the blest,
They meet again, each widow'd sound
Through Memory's realm had wing'd in quest
Of its sweet mate, till all were found.
Nor ev'n in waking, did the clue,

Thus strangely caught, escape again;
For never lark its matins knew

So well as now I knew this strain.

And oft, when Memory's wondrous spell
Is talk'd of in our tranquil bower,

I sing this lady's song, and tell
The vision of that morning hour.

TO LORD BYRON,

ON READING HIS STANZAS ON THE SILVER FOOT OF A SKULL
MOUNTED AS A CUP FOR WINE.

WHY hast thou bound around, with silver rim,
This once gay peopled palace of the soul?

And accounts have just reach'd us that one Mr Galt
Has declared open war against English and grammar!
He had long been suspected of some such design-
And, the better his wicked intents to arrive at,
Had lately 'mong C-lb-rn's troops of the line
(The penny-a-line men) enlisted as private.
There school'd, with a rabble of words at command,
Scotch, English, and slang, in promiscuous alliance,
He at length against Syntax has taken his stand,

And sets all the nine parts of speech at defiance.
Next advices, no doubt, further facts will afford ;-
In the mean time the danger most imminent grows,
He has taken the Life of one eminent Lord,

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,
With a halo (by way of a night-cap) upon it!5

We shudder in tracing these terrible lines-
Something bad they must mean, though we can't
make it out;

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

5. He was a mystery in a winding-sheet, crowned with a halo.» -Id.

A VOICE FROM MARATHON.

O FOR a voice, as loud as that of Fame,
To breathe the word-Arise!
From Pindus to Taygetus to proclaim-
Let every Greek arise!

Ye who have hearts to strike a single blow,
Hear my despairing cries!

Ye who have hands to immolate one foe,
Arise! arise! arise!

From the dim fields of Asphodel beneath,
Upborne by cloudy sighs

Of those who love their country still in death,-
Ev'n I-ev'n I-arise!

These are not hands for earthly wringing-these!-
Blood should not blind these eyes!-

Yet here I stand, untomb'd MILTIADES,
Weeping-arise! arise!

The feverish war-drum mingles with the fife
In dismal symphony,

And Moslem strikes at liberty and life,

For both, strike harder ye!

Hark! how Citharon with his earthquake voice
Calls to the utmost shores!

While Pluto bars, against the riving noise,
His adamantine doors!

Athenè, tiptoe on her crumbling dome,
Cries-« Youth, ye must be men!»
And Echo shouts within her rocky tomb,-
« Greeks, become Greeks again!»

The stone first brought, his living tomb to close,
Pausanias' mother piled:

Matrons of Greece! will ye do less for foes

Than she did for her child?

Let boyhood strike!—let every rank and age
Do each what each can do!
Let him whose arm is mighty as his rage,

Strike deep-strike home-strike through!
Be wise, be firm, be cautious, yet be bold!
Be brother-true! be ONE!

I teach but what the Phrygian taught of old-
Divide, and be undone!

Hallow'd in life, in death itself, is he
Who for his country dies;

A light, a star, to all futurity-
Arise ye, then! arise!

O countrymen! O countrymen! once more-
By earth-and seas-and skies--

By Heaven-by sacred Hades-I implore-
Arise! arise! arise!

THE GHOST OF MILTIADES.

Ah quoties dubius scriptis exarsit amator!-OVID.

THE ghost of Miltiades came at night,
And he stood by the bed of the Benthamite,
And he said, in a voice that thrill'd the frame,
If ever the sound of Marathon's name
Hath fired thy blood, or flush'd thy brow,
Lover of liberty, rouse thee now!»>

The Benthamite, yawning, left his bed-
Away to the Stock Exchange he sped,
And he found the scrip of Greece so high,
That it fired his blood, it flush'd his eye,

And oh! 't was a sight for the ghost to see,
For there never was Greek more Greek than he!
And still, as the premium higher went,
His ecstasy rose-so much per cent.