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IMPROMPTU,

To Miss

WHENE'ER I address you, you bid me say "Miss,"
And I own there are excellent reasons for this;
Since your temper and face make it equally plain,
That a man would be better to miss you than gain.
September 7th, 1830.

THE EPISCOPAL MAMMOTH,

ALIAS

A-X-D-R THE 66 GREAT" OF MEATH.

"She walks in beauty, like the night."-Hebrew Melodies.

I.

He walks in fatness-what a sight

For Christian climes and Christian eyes!
His coat as" Hunt's Jet Blacking" bright-
A rich silk apron o'er his thighs!

His cheeks, in that plethoric plight
That Lent, to Popish priests, denies.

II.

Thy day is o'er-thou'lt soon be less-
Men do not venerate thy Grace—
They say, "while we are in distress,
How bloated is yon Bishop's face-
Where looks of gluttony express

How carnal is their dwelling-place!"

1 The first of a series of parodies of the Hebrew Melodies, devoted to the Church, which were written for, and commenced with, the Comet, May 1st, 1831.

III.

And view the cheek, and mark the brow,
Of him, in church so eloquent,
At preaching patience under woe-
They tell of nights in boozing spent-
Of port and claret's ruby glow-

And loves-(of course ?)—ALL innocent!''

1 The following parodies, on the subjoined sonnet of Lord Byron and the last of his Hebrew Melodies, are from the pen of a member of the original Comet Club, and are at once too good in themselves and too apposite to the present occasion, to be omitted here.

SONNET.

To Genevra.

Thine eyes' blue tenderness, thy long fair hair,
And the wan lustre of thy features, caught
From contemplation-where serenely wrought,
Seems Sorrow's softness charmed from its despair-
Have thrown such speaking sadness in thine air,
That-but I know thy blessed bosom fraught
With mines of unalloy'd and stainless thought-
I should have deemed thee doomed to earthly care.
With such an aspect, by his colours blent,

When from his beauty-breathing pencil born,
(Except that thou hast nothing to repent)
The Magdalen of Guido saw the morn-

Such seem'st thou-but how much more excellent!
With naught Remorse can claim-nor Virtue scorn.

SONNET.

To the Right Reverend Father in God,
The Lord Bishop of

Thy cheeks' round ruddiness, thy broad gray wig,
And the rich plumpness of thy features-caught
From drinking claret-(who'd have ever thought
A Bishop so addicted to a swig?)
Have given thee a rotundity so big,

That-but I know thy blessed paunch is fraught

With all a Prelate's appetite e'er sought,1
I should have deemed your Reverence-a PIG.2
"With such an aspect, by his colours blent,"

When born upon the bard's dramatic page,
(And like him, too, upon his glass intent,)

The Falstaff of Will. Shakspeare trod the stage-
Such seem'st thou-but how much more corpulent!
With ALL thy friends can wish-CHURCH PATRONAGE!

AN EPISCOPAL PORTRAIT.

"A spirit passed before me: I beheld."-Hebrew Melodies.

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"Who is more just than I? or who more pure ?
Deem'st thou the CHURCH ESTABLISHED insecure?
Tillers of clay! vile dwellers in the dust!
The tithes are mine by LAW, and pay ye must!
Degraded clowns! immersed in Popery's night,
Blind to my sermons, filled with Gospel light!"

Superbum

Pontificum potiore cœnis.-HORACE, II. 14.

2 "We are told by Plutarch," says Shiel, "that a banquet was once provided by a celebrated epicure, consisting of an immense variety of dishes, but that the whole was made up of pork, which had been cooked after different fashions. The CHURCH is like the pork that supplied the materials of this variegated feast, and admits of DRESSING in an infinite diversity of ways. God forbid, however, that we should insinuate that any of the Dignitaries of the Establishment offered the comparison to our fancy, or that we should exclaim at the sight of ONE of them, Epicuri de grege PORCUS!"

SONG FOR UNITED IRISHMEN OR IRISHMEN UNITED.

"Frangimur si collidimur !"

Motto of the Seven United Provinces of
Holland-about the size of Ulster !

AIR-" Major-domo am I.”

I.

LET fools waste the night,
That was made for delight,

In wrangling on Church or on State;
We care not a fig

About Tory or Whig,

Or puzzle our heads with debate.
We leave the great to bribe and to spout;
We leave the mob to hiss and to shout;
We ask not, who's in or who's out?
But laugh,

And quaff,

And send the song gayly about:

For Tories and Whigs may be right or be wrong,
But we ALL like a bottle, a friend, and a song.1

Where virtue is seen,

Be it Orange or Green,

II.

That virtue we love and respect;

No distinction we know,

Of a friend or a foe,

By the nicknames of party or sect.

We leave the great, &c.

III.

Then, away with the ass

Who would prate o'er his glass

Of Green or of Orange to-night!

For good fellows like us

Only care to discuss

The merits of red and of white.

We leave the great, &c.

May 26th, 1837.

'This couplet to be repeated in singing.

EPIGRAM,

On a big-mouthed Glutton.

"GIVE me some place to stand!" Archimedes once cried, "And I'll move the whole earth at my will."Had you the same thing, Ned, your mouth is so wide, You might swallow the globe as a pill.

March 27th, 1829.

A CONTRAST FOR THE CHURCH.

Suggested by reading, during a season of famine and pestilence in the West of Ireland, of some tithe-seizures of potatoes, potato-pots, &c., attended with a legalized slaughter of their miserable owners, in consequence of an attempt at "a rescue."

THE ancient natives of Marseilles,
As Strabo, if I err not, tells,-
Like Tories, in the present time,
Asserting, 'tis for Ireland's good

The Church's reign. of wealth and crime
Should be upheld with guiltless blood-

1 The apparently excessive violence of the lines on this subject cannot be more appropriately justified, than by adverting to the single narrative, among many such scenes, of the "Battle of Skibbereen," the name given by Cobbett to the tithe-massacre perpetrated by Parson Morrit, of Skibbereen, in the county of Cork, on his Popish parishioners, in 1821, a year of scarcity and pestilence. No less than thirty persons are stated to have been "sent to another world" on this occasion, by the "man of God," who was both a Parson and Magistrate, and, as such, ordered the Police to fire! The people's resistance to his decimating Reverence arose from their having left him the tenth perch of every potato-ridge in their fields, the produce of which he refused to dig and carry away, insisting on taking his tithe out of the potatoes they had stored] up, and which were the ONLY food they had to live upon! Amongst other affecting circumstances, on this occasion, the following instance occurred. A fine boy, about 14 years old, the only child of a poor widow, who resided in a miserable hut on the road-side, in the neighbourhood of this military Pastor, having run out to ascertain the cause of the volleys of musketry, was fired at and shot through the body; and, having crawled for refuge to the furze-bush of an adjoining ditch, died there, and remained undiscovered till he was washed down by the floods upon the road between Rosscarbery and Skibbereen, where a friend of

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