That Heav'n has shed upon me con amore- Thou dingy, dirty, drabbled, draggled jill !" How sinners are despised by saints. By saints!—the Hypocrites that ope heav'n's do The Saints-the Bigots that in public spout, Mere living bundles of combustion. The Saints!—the aping Fanatics that talk A Sunday walk, And shun God's work as you should shun your own. The Saints!-the Formalists, the extra pious, Who think the mortal husk can save the soul, To church, just like a lignum-vita bowl! The Saints!-The Pharisees, whose beadle stands Beside a stern coercive kirk. A piece of human mason-work, Calling all sermons contrabands, In that great Temple that's not made with hands. Thrice blessed, rather, is the man, with whom The gracious prodigality of nature, The balm, the bliss, the beauty, and the bloom, To his tuned spirit the wild heather-bells The jubilate of the soaring lark Is chant of clerk; For choir, the thrush and the gregarious linnet; Each cloud-capp'd mountain is a holy altar; Rich in deep hymns of gratitude and love! Sufficiently by stern necessitarians Poor Nature, with her face begrimed by dust, Is stoked, coked, smoked, and almost choked; but must Religion have its own Utilitarians, Labell'd with evangelical phylacteries, To make the road to heav'n a railway trust, And churches-that's the naked fact-mere factories? Oh! simply open wide the Temple door, The willing advent of the rich and poor! How strange it is while on all vital questions, That occupy the House and public mind, We always meet with some humane suggestions Of gentle measures of a healing kind, And marks his narrow code with legal rigour! What men of all political persuasion One market morning, in my usual rambles, I had to halt awhile, like other folks, To let a killing butcher coax A score of lambs and fatted sheep to slaughter. A sturdy man he look'd to fell an ox, Fierce bark'd the dog, and many a blow was dealt, At last there came a pause of brutal force, The cur was silent, for his jaws were full The man had whoop'd and halloed till dead hoarse. And thus it stammer'd from a stander-by "Zounds!—my good fellow,—it quite makes me-why It really-my dear fellow-do just try Conciliation!" Stringing his nerves like flint, The sturdy butcher seized upon the hint,— At least he seized upon the foremost wether, And hugg'd and lugg'd and tugg'd him neck and crop If tails come off he didn't care a feather,— Again-good-humouredly to end our quarrel- I'll fit you with a tale, Whereto is tied a moral. Once on a time a certain English lass Was seized with symptoms of such deep decline That, as their wont is at such desperate pass, The Doctors gave her over-to an ass. Each morn the patient quaffed a frothy bowl Robbing a shaggy suckling of a foal Which got proportionably spare and skinny- When lo! to prove each prophet was a ninny, To aggravate the case, There were but two grown donkeys in the place; Of milk, or even chalk and water. No matter: at the usual hour of eight Jenny be dead, Miss,-but I'ze brought ye Jack, He doesn't give no milk-but he can bray." So runs the story, And, in vain self-glory, Some Saints would sneer at Gubbins for his blindness But what the better are their pious saws To ailing souls, than dry hee-haws, Without the milk of human kindness? ODE TO MELANCHOLY. COME, let us set our careful breasts, The world-it is a wilderness, Where tears are hung on every tree; For thus my gloomy phantasy Makes all things weep with me! Come let us sit and watch the sky, And fancy clouds, where no clouds be; Grief is enough to blot the eye, Why should birds sing such merry notes, Why shines the Sun, except that he |