No. IV. Decemb. 4. We have been favoured with the following specimen of Jacobin Poetry, which we give to the world without any comment or imitation. We are informed (we know not how truly) that it will be sung at the Meeting of the Friends of Freedom; an account of which is anticipated in our present paper. LA SAINTE GUILLOTINE. A NEW SONG. ATTEMPTED FROM THE FRENCH. Tune, “O'er the vine-cover'd hills and gay regions of France." I. FROM the blood bedew'd vallies and mountains of France, See the Genius of Gallic invasion advance! Old ocean shall waft her, unruffled by storm, While our shores are all lined with the Friends of Reform.* * See Proclamation of the Directory. Confiscation and Murder attend in her train, With meek-eyed Sedition, the daughter of Paine ;* While her sportive Poissardes with light footsteps are seen To dance in a ring round the gay Guillotine.+ II. To London," the rich, the defenceless,” she comes- III See the level of Freedom sweeps over the land- Not a seat shall be left in a House that we know, *The "too long calumniated author of the Rights of Man" See a Sir Something Burdett's speech at the Shakspeare, as referred to in the Courier of Nov. 30. The Guillotine at Arras was, as is well known to every Jacobin, painted "Couleur de Rose." + See Weekly Examiner, No. II, Extract from the Courier. IV. Two heads, says the proverb, are better than one, Then down with the ONE, Boys! and up with the FIVE! How our bishops and judges will stare with amazement, When their heads are thrust out at the National Casement !* When the National Razor has shaved them quite clean, What a handsome oblation to Sainte Guillotine! *La petite Fenêtre, and la Razoire Nationale, fondling expressions applied to the Guillotine by the Jacobins in France, and their pupils here. C No. V. Decemb. 11. We have already hinted at the principle by which the followers of the Jacobinical Sect are restrained from the exercise of their own favourite virtue of Charity. The force of this prohibition, and the strictness with which it is observed, are strongly exemplified in the following poem. It is the production of the same Author, whose happy effort in English Sapphics we pre sumed to imitate; the present effusion is in Dactylics, and equally subject to the laws of Latin Prosody. THE SOLDIER'S WIFE. Weary way-wanderer, languid and sick åt heart, We think that we see him fumbling in the pocket of his blue pantaloons; that the splendid shilling is about to make its appearance, and glad the heart of the poor sufferer. But no such thing-the Bard very calmly contemplates her situation, which he describes in a pair of very pathetical stanzas; and after the following well-imagined topic of consolation, concludes by leaving her to Providence. Thy husband will never return from the war again; Cold is thy hopeless heart, even as Charity. Cold are thy famished babes-God help thee, widow'd one! We conceived that it would be necessary to follow up this general rule with the particular exception, and to point out one of those cases in which the embargo upon Jacobin Bounty is sometimes suspended; with this view we have subjoined the poem of THE SOLDIER'S FRIEND. DACTYLICS. COME, little Drummer Boy, lay down your knap sack here: I am the Soldier's Friend-here are some books for you; Nice clever books by Tom Paine, the philanthropist. Here's half-a-crown for you-here are some handbills too Go to the Barracks, and give all the Soldier's some. Tell them the Sailors are all in a Mutiny. [Exit Drummer Boy, with Handbill's and Halfa-crown.-Manet Soldier's Friend. |