And proudly talk of recreant Berengare-
O first the age, and then the man compare !
That

age how dark ! congenial minds how rare !
No host of friends with kindred zeal did burn!
No throbbing hearts awaited his return !
Prostrate alike when prince and peasant fell,
He only disenchanted from the spell,
Like the weak worm that gems the starless night,
Moved in the scanty circlet of his light:
And was it strange if he withdrew the ray
That did but guide the night-birds to their prey ?

The ascending day-star with a bolder eye
Hath lit each dew-drop on our trimmer lawn !
Yet not for this, if wise, shall we decry
The spots and struggles of the timid dawn ;
Lest so we tempt th' approaching noon to scorn
The mists and painted vapours of our morn.

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,
And heed them more than aught they do or say;
The lingering ghosts of many a secret deed
Still-born or haply strangled in its birth;

These best reveal the smooth man's inward creed ! These mark the spot where lies the treasure Worth!

made up of impudence and trick, With cloven tongue prepared to hiss and lick, Rome's brazen serpent—boldly dares discuss The roasting of thy heart, O brave John Huss! And with grim triumph and a truculent glee Absolves anew the Pope-wrought perfidy, That made an empire's plighted faith a lie, And fix'd a broad stare on the Devil's eye-(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 now defends would then have done the deed. But who not feels persuasion's gentle sway, Who but must meet the proffered hand half When courteous

way

POET. (aside)
(Rome's smooth go-between !)

FRIEND

Laments the advice that soured a milky queen-
(For“ bloody” all enlighten'd men confess
An antiquated error of the press :)
Who rapt by zeal beyond her sex's bounds,

With actual cautery staunched the church's wounds!
And tho' he deems, that with too broad a blur
We damn the French and Irish massacre,

[err!
Yet blames them both—and thinks the Pope might
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;-
What boasts tho

may deplore,
Still I repeat, words lead me not astray
When the shown feeling points a different way.
Smooth can say grace at slander's feast,
And bless each haut-gout cook'd by monk or priest;
Leaves the full lie on 's gong to swell,
Content with half-truths that do just as well ;
But duly decks his mitred comrade's flanks,
And with him shares the Irish nation's thanks!

So much for you, my Friend! who own a Church,
And would not leave your mother in the lurch!
But when a Liberal asks me what I think-
Scar'd by the blood and soot of Cobbett's ink,
And Jeffrey's glairy phlegm and Connor's foam,
In search of some safe parable I roam-
An emblem sometimes may comprise a tome !

Disclaimant of his uncaught grandsire's mood,
I see a tiger lapping kitten's food :

.

And who shall blame him that he purrs applause,
When brother Brindle pleads the good old cause;
And frisks his pretty tail, and half unsheathes his

claws !
Yet not the less, for modern lights unapt,
I trust the bolts and cross-bars of the laws
More than the Protestant milk all newly lapt,
Impearling a tame wild-cat's whisker'd jaws !

THE DEVIL'S THOUGHTS.

I.

FROM his brimstone bed at break of day
A walking the Devil is

gone,
To visit his snug little farm the Earth,

And see how his stock goes on.

II.

Over the hill and over the dale,

And he went over the plain, And backward and forward he switched his long tail

As a gentleman switches his cane.

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,
And there was a hole where the tail came through.

IV.

He saw a Lawyer killing a viper

On a dung hill hard by his own stable ;

And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind

Of Cain and his brother Abel.

v.

He saw an Apothecary on a white horse

Ride by on his vocations ;
And the Devil thought of his old friend

Death in the Revelations.

VI.

He saw a cottage with a double coach-house,

A cottage of gentility;
And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin

Is pride that apes humility.

VII.

He peep'd into a rich bookseller's shop,

Quoth he! “ We are both of one college ! For I sate myself, like a cormorant, once

Hard by the tree of knowledge.1”

| And all amid them stood the tree of life
High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold (query paper money :) and next to Life
Our Death, the tree of knowledge, grew fast by.-

So clomb this first grand thief-
Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life
Sat like a cormorant.

PAR. LOST. IV.

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 kat' Fóxnv, may be regarded as Life sensu eminentiori; a