Our would-be Keepers of the Sabbath-day
Are like the Keepers of the brutes ferocious-
As soon the Tiger might expect to stalk
About the grounds from Saturday till Monday,
As any harmless man to take a walk,
If Saints could clap him in a cage on Sunday— But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
In spite of all hypocrisy can spin,
As surely as I am a Christian scion, I cannot think it is a mortal sin
(Unless he's loose)—to look upon a lion. I really think that one may go, perchance,
To see a bear, as guiltless as on Monday—
(That is, provided that he did not dance)——
Bruin's no worse than bakin' on a Sunday-
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
In spite of all the fanatic compiles,
I can not think the day a bit diviner,
Because no children, with forestalling smiles,
Throng, happy, to the gates of Eden Minor-
It is not plain, to my poor faith at least,
That what we christen "Natural" on Monday,
The wondrous history of Bird and Beast,
Can be unnatural because it's Sunday-
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
Whereon is sinful fantasy to work?
The Dove, the winged Columbus of man's haven? The tender Love-Bird-or the filial Stork?
The punctual Crane-the providential Raven?
The Pelican whose bosom feeds her young?
Nay, must we cut from Saturday till Monday
That feathered marvel with a human tongue,
Because she does not preach upon a Sunday--
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
The busy Beaver—that sagacious beast!
The Sheep that owned an Oriental ShepherdThat Desert-ship, the Camel of the East,
The horned Rhinoceros-the spotted Leopard
The Creatures of the Great Creator's hand
Are surely sights for better days than Monday-
The Elephant, although he wears no band,
Has he no sermon in his trunk for Sunday?—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
What harm if men who burn the midnight-oil,
Weary of frame, and worn and wan of feature,
Seek once a week their spirits to assoil,
And snatch a glimpse of "Animated Nature ?"
Better it were if, in his best of suits,
The artisan, who goes to work on Monday, Should spend a leisure-hour among the brutes, Than make a beast of his own self on SundayBut what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
Why, zounds! what raised so Protestant a fuss
(Omit the zounds! for which I make apology)
But that the Papists, like some Fellows, thus
Had somehow mixed up Dens with their Theology?
Is Brahma's Bull-a Hindoo god at home-
A Papal Bull to be tied up till Monday?—
Or Leo, like his namesake, Pope of Rome,
That there is such a dread of them on Sunday-
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
Spirit of Kant! have we not had enough
To make Religion sad, and sour, and snubbish,
But Saints Zoological must cant their stuff,
As vessels cant their ballast-rattling rubbish!
Once let the sect, triumphant to their text,
Shut Nero up from Saturday till Monday,
And sure as fate they will deny us next
To see the Dandelions on a Sunday-
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
ODE TO RAE WILSON, ESQUIRE.*
"Close, close your eyes with holy dread,
And weave a circle round him thrice;
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise!"-COLERIDGE.
"It's very hard them kind of men
Won't let a body be."-OLD BALLAD.
A WANDERER, Wilson, from my native land,
Remote, O Rae, from godliness and thee,
Where rolls between us the eternal sea,
Besides some furlongs of a foreign sand-
Beyond the broadest Scotch of London Wall;
Beyond the loudest Saint that has a call;
Across the wavy waste between us stretched,
A friendly missive warns me of a stricture,
Wherein my likeness you have darkly etched,
And though I have not seen the shadow sketched,
Thus I remark prophetic on the picture.
I guess the features:-in a line to paint
Their moral ugliness, I'm not a saint.
Not one of those self-constituted saints,
Quacks-not physicians—in the cure of souls,
Censors who sniff out moral taints,
And call the devil over his own coals
Those pseudo Privy Councillors of God,
Who write down judgments with a pen hard-nibbed:
Ushers of Beelzebub's Black Rod,
Commending sinners not to ice thick-ribbed,
But endless flames, to scorch them like flax-
Yet sure of heaven themselves, as if they'd cribbed
The impression of St. Peter's keys in wax!
Of such a character no single trace
Exists, I know, in my fictitious face;
There wants a certain cast about the eye;
Who had, in one of his books, characterized some of Hood's verses as “ faneness and ribaldry."
A certain lifting of the nose's tip;
A certain curling of the nether lip,
In scorn of all that is, beneath the sky;
In brief, it is an aspect deleterious,
A face decidedly not serious,
A face profane, that would not do at all
To make a face at Exeter Hall
That Hall where bigots rant, and cant, and pray,
And laud each other face to face,
Till every farthing-candle ray
Conceives itself a great gas-light of grace!
Well-be the graceless lineaments confest!
I do enjoy this bounteous beauteous earth;
And dote upon a jest
"Within the limits of becoming mirth;"—
No solemn sanctimonious face I pull,
Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious—
Nor study in my sanctum supercilious
To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull.
I pray for grace-repent each sinful act—
Peruse, but underneath the rose, my Bible;
And love my neighbor, far too well, in fact,
To call and twit him with a godly tract
That's turned by application to a libel.
My heart ferments not with the bigot's leaven,
All creeds I view with toleration thorough,
And have a horror of regarding heaven
As any body's rotten borough.
What else? No part I take in party fray,
With tropes from Billingsgate's slang-whanging Tartars,
I fear no Pope-and let great Ernest play
At Fox and Goose with Fox's Martyrs!
I own I laugh at over-righteous men,
I own I shake my sides at ranters,
And treat sham Abr'am saints with wicked banters,
I even own, that there are times-but then
It's when I've got my wine-I say d - canters!
I've no ambition to enact the spy
On fellow-souls, a spiritual Pry-
'Tis said that people ought to guard their noses
Who thrust them into matters none of theirs :
And, though no delicacy discomposes
Your saint, yet I consider faith and prayers
Among the privatest of men's affairs.
I do not hash the Gospel in my books,
And thus upon the public mind intrude it,
As if I thought, like Otaheitan cooks,
No food was fit to eat till I had chewed it.
On Bible stilts I don't affect to stalk;
Nor lard with Scripture my familiar talk-
For man may pious texts repeat,
And yet religion have no inward seat;
'Tis not so plain as the old Hill of Howth,
A man has got his belly full of meat
Because he talks with victuals in his mouth!
Mere verbiage-it is not worth a carrot !
Why, Socrates or Plato-where 's the odds?-
Once taught a Jay to supplicate the gods,
And made a Polly-theist of a Parrot!
A mere professor, spite of all his cant, is
Not a whit better than a Mantis-
An insect, of what clime I can't determine,
That lifts its paws most parson-like, and thence,
By simple savages—through sheer pretense—
Is reckoned quite a saint among the vermin.
But where's the reverence, or where the nous,
To ride on one's religion through the lobby,
Whether as stalking-horse or hobby,
To show its pious paces to "the house."
I honestly confess that I would hinder
The Scottish member's legislative rigs,
That spiritual Pindar,
Who looks on erring souls as straying pigs,
That must be lashed by law, wherever found,
And driven to church as to the parish pound.
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