A letter and free-bring it here, I have no correspondent who franks. No! yes! can it be? Why, my dear, 'Tis our glorious, our Protestant Bankes. "Dear sir, as I know you desire That the Church should receive due protection I humbly presume to require Your aid at the Cambridge election. "It has lately been brought to my knowledge, To suppress each cathedral and college, To assist this detestable scheme Three nuncios from Rome are come over; They left Calais on Monday by steam, And landed to dinner at Dover. "An army of grim Cordeliers, Well furnish'd with relics and vermin, "The finance-scheme of Canning contains A new Easter-offering tax: And he means to devote all the gains To a bounty on thumb-screws and racks. Your living, so neat and compact— Pray, don't let the news give you pain? Is promised, I know for a fact, To an olive-faced padre from Spain." I read, and I felt my heart bleed, To our Protestant champion's committee. No fleering! no distance! no scorn! They asked after my wife who is dead, And my children who never were born. They then, like high-principled Tories, Called our Sovereign unjust and unsteady, There were parsons in boot and in basket; There were Sneaker and Griper, a pair Who writes my Lord Goslingham's speeches. Dr. Buzz, who alone is a host, Who, with arguments weighty as lead, Proves six times a week in the Post Dr. Nimrod, whose orthodox toes Are seldom withdrawn from the stirrup. And wiping away perspiration; A layman can scarce form a notion So ill with our free constitution; How the Bishop of Norwich had barter'd How burning would soon come in fashion, We were all so much touched and excited And in tones, which each moment grew louder, Thus from subject to subject we ran, From that time I remember no more. We were rumbling o'er Trumpington stones. WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED. (1802-1839.) LXIII. THE RED FISHERMAN; OR, THE DEVIL'S DECOY. Published in Knight's Annual. THE Abbot arose, and closed his book, And wandered forth alone, to look Upon the summer moon: A starlight sky was o'er his head, A quiet breeze around; And the flowers a thrilling fragrance shed It was not an hour, nor a scene, for aught Yet the holy man had a cloud of thought He gazed on the river that gurgled by, He clasped his gilded rosary, But he did not tell the beads; If he looked to the heaven, 't was not to invoke If he opened his lips, the words they spoke A pious priest might the Abbot seem, He had swayed the crozier well; But what was the theme of the Abbot's dream, Companionless, for a mile or more, As it winds by many a sloping hill, As a lover thinks of constancy, Or an advocate of truth. He did not mark how the skies in wrath He did not mark how the mossy path The water had slept for many a year, Unchanged and motionless; The space of half a rood; The surface had the hue of clay And the scent of human blood; The trees and the herbs that round it grew Were venomous and foul, And the birds that through the bushes flew Were the vulture and the owl; The water was as dark and rank As ever a Company pumped, And the perch that was netted and laid on the bank Grew rotten while it jumped; And bold was he who thither came At midnight, man or boy, For the place was cursed with an evil name, And that name was "The Devil's Decoy"! |