I HAVE heard of reasons manifold Why Love must needs be blind, What outward form and feature are He seeth with the heart. LINES SUGGESTED BY THE LAST WORDS OF BERENGARIUS No more 'twixt conscience staggering and the Pope Soon shall I now before my God appear, By him to be acquitted, as I hope; By him to be condemned, as I fear.— REFLECTION ON THE ABOVE. Lynx amid moles! had I stood by thy bed, All are not strong alike through storms to steer Right onward. What? though dread of threaten'd death And dungeon torture made thy hand and breath Inconstant to the truth within thy heart? That truth, from which, through fear, thou twice didst start, Fear haply told thee, was a learned strife, Or not so vital as to claim thy life: And myriads had reached Heaven, who never knew Ye, who secure 'mid trophies not your own, No host of friends with kindred zeal did burn! Like the weak worm that gems the starless night, And was it strange if he withdrew the ray The ascending day-star with a bolder eye SANCTI DOMINICI PALLIUM; A DIALOGUE BETWEEN POET AND FRIEND, FOUND WRITTEN ON THE BLANK LEAF AT THE BEGINNING OF BUTLER'S BOOK OF THE CHURCH. POET. I NOTE the moods and feelings men betray, These best reveal the smooth man's inward creed! made up of impudence and trick, With cloven tongue prepared to hiss and lick, (Pleas'd with the guilt, yet envy-stung at heart To stand outmaster'd in his own black art!) Yet FRIEND. Enough of! we're agreed, Who but must meet the proffered hand half-way POET. (Aside.) (Rome's smooth go-between!) FRIEND. Laments the advice that soured a milky queen— Who rapt by zeal beyond her sex's bounds, With actual cautery stanched the church's wounds! And tho' he deems, that with too broad a blur We damn the French and Irish massacre, Yet blames them both-and thinks the Pope might err What think you now? Boots it with spear and shield Against such gentle foes to take the field Whose beck'ning hands the mild Caduceus wield? POET. What think I now? Ev'n what I thought before; Still I repeat, words lead me not astray When the shown feeling points a different way. can say grace at slander's feast, And bless each haut-gout cook'd by monk or priest; -'s gong to swell, So much for you, my Friend! who own a Church, But when a Liberal asks me what I think- Disclaimant of his uncaught grandsire's mood, And who shall blame him that he purrs applause, I trust the bolts and cross-bars of the laws THE DEVIL'S THOUGHTS. I. FROM his brimstone bed at break of day To visit his snug little farm the Earth, II. Over the hill and over the dale, And he went over the plain, And backward and forward he switched his long tail III. And how then was the Devil drest? Oh! he was in his Sunday's best : His jacket was red and his breeches were blue, IV. He saw a Lawyer killing a viper Vol. VII. On a dung-hill hard by his own stable; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind V. He saw an Apothecary on a white horse And the Devil thought of his old friend VI. He saw a cottage with a double coach-house, And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin VII. He peep'd into a rich bookseller's shop, Hard by the tree of knowledge."* And all amid them stood the tree of life Of vegetable gold (query paper money :) and next to Life The allegory here is so apt, that in a catalogue of various readings obtained from collating the MSS. one might expect to find it noted, that for "life" Cod. quid. habent, "trade." Though indeed the trade, i. e. the bibliopolic, so called kar' ¿§óxmv, may be regarded as Life sensu eminentiori; a suggestion, which I owe to a young retailer in the hosiery line, who on hearing a description of the net profits, dinner parties, country houses, &c., of the trade, exclaimed, "Ay! that's what I call Life now!"— This "Life, our Death," is thus happily contrasted with the fruits of authorship.-Sic nos non nobis mellificamus apes. Of this poem, which with the Fire, Famine, and Slaughter, first appeared in the Morning Post, the 1st, 2d, 3d, 9th, and 16th stanzas were dictated by Mr. Southey. See Apologetic Preface, p. 221. If any one should ask who General meant, the Author begs leave |