With omens oft' I strove to warn thy fwains,
Omens, the types of thy impending chains.
I fent the magpye from the British foil,
With reftlefs beak thy blooming fruit to spoil;
To din thine ears with unharmonious clack,
And haunt thy holy walls in white and black.
What else are those thou seeft in bishops' geer,
Who crop the nurseries of learning here;
Afpiring, greedy, full of senseless prate,
Devour the church, and chatter to the fate?
As you grew more degenerate and base,
I fent you millions of the croaking race;
Emblems of infects vile, who spread their spawn
Through all thy land, in armour, fur, and lawn;
A naufeous brood, that fills your fenate walls,
And in the chambers of your viceroy crawls !
See, where that new-devouring vermin runs,
Sent in my anger from the land of Huns!
With harpy-claws it undermines the ground,
And fudden spreads a numerous offspring round.
Th' amphibious tyrant, with his ravenous band,
Drains all thy lakes of fish, of fruits thy land.
Where is the holy well that bore my name?
Fled to the fountain back, from whence it came !
Fair Freedom's emblem once, which smoothly flows,
And bleffings equally on all bestows.
Here, from the neighbouring nursery of arts,
The students, drinking, rais'd their wit and parts;
* The univerfity of Dublin, called Trinity College, was founded by queen Elizabeth in 1591. IRISH ED.
Here, for an age and more, improv'd their vein,
Their Phoebus I, my fpring their Hippocrene.
Difcourag'd youths! now all their hopes must fail,
Condemn'd to country cottages and ale ;
To foreign prelates make a flavish court,
And by their fweat procure a mean support;
Or, for the clafficks, read "Th' Attorney's Guide;"
Collect excife, or wait upon the tide.
Oh! had I been apoftle to the Swiss,
Or hardy Scot, or any land but this ;
Combin'd in arms, they had their foes defied,
And kept their liberty, or bravely died.
Thou ftill with tyrants in fucceffion curft,
The laft invaders trampling on the first :
Nor fondly hope for fome reverse of fate,
Virtue herself would now return too late.
Not half thy courfe of mifery is run,
Thy greatest evils yet are scarce begun.
Soon fhall thy fons (the time is just at hand)
Be all made captives in their native land;
When, for the use of no Hibernian born,
Shall rife one blade of grafs, one ear of corn;
When shells and leather fhall for money pafs,
Nor thy oppreffing lords afford thee brafs *.
But all turn leafers to that + mongrel breed,
Who, from thee sprung, yet on thy vitals feed;
* Wood's ruinous project in 1724. IRISH ED.
+ The abfentees, who spent the income of their Irish eftates, places, and penfions, in England. IRISH ED.
Who to yon ravenous ifle thy treafures bear,
And wafte in luxury thy harvests there;
For pride and ignorance a proverb grown,
The jeft of wits, and to the court unknown.
I fcorn thy fpurious and degenerate line,
And from this hour my patronage refign.
ON READING DR. YOUNG'S SATIRES
THE UNIVERSAL PASSION,
BY WHICH HE MEANS PRIDE.
F there be truth in what you fing,
Such god-like virtues in the king;
A minifter fo fill'd with zeal
And wifdom for the common-weal :
If he who in the chair prefides
So fteadily the fenate guides:
If others, whom you make your theme,
Are feconds in the glorious scheme:
If every peer, whom you commend,
To worth and learning be a friend :
If this be truth, as you atteft,
What land was ever half fo bleft?
Sir Robert Walpole, afterwards carl of Orford. Sir Spencer Compton, then fpeaker, afterwards earl of Wilmington,
No falfehood now among the
great,
And tradesmen now no longer cheat;
Now on the bench fair Justice shines ;
Her fcale to neither fide inclines:
Now Pride and Cruelty are flown,
And Mercy here exalts her throne:
For fuch is good-example's power,
It does its office every hour,
Where governors are good and wife;
Or else the trueft maxim lyes :
For fo we find all ancient fages
Decree, that, ad exemplum regis,
Through all the realm his virtues rum,
Ripening and kindling like the fun.
If this be true, then how much more
When you have nam'd at least a fcore
Of courtiers, each in their degree,
If poffible, as good as he?
Or take it in a different view.
I afk (if what you say be true)
If you affirm the present age
Deferves your fatire's keenest
If that fame universal paffion
With every vice hath fill'd the nation :
If virtue dares not venture down
A fingle step beneath the crown
If clergymen, to fhew their wit,
Praife clafficks more than holy writ:
If bankrupts, when they are undone,
Into the fenate-boufe can run,
And fell their votes at fuch a rate,
As will retrieve a loft eftate:
If law be fuch a partial whore,
To fpare the rich, and plague the poor:
If these be of all crimes the worst,
What land was ever half fo curft
UOTH the thief to the dog, let me into your door,
And I'll give you these delicate bits.
Quoth the dog, I fhall then be more villain than you 're,
And befides must be out of my wits
Your delicate bits will not ferve me a meal,
But my mafter each day gives me bread
-You'll fly, when you get what you came here to steal, And I must be hang'd in your ftead.
The stock-jobber thus from Change-alley goes down,
And tips you the freeman a wink,
Let me have but your vote to serve for the town,
And here is a guinea to drink.
Says the freeman, your guinea to-night would be spent!
Your offers of bribery cease:
I'll vote for my landlord, to whom I pay rent,
Or elfe I may forfeit my lease.
From London they come, filly people to chouse,
Their lands and their faces unknown:
Who 'd vote a rogue into the parliament-house,
That would turn a man out of his own?
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