Never, alive!--But on the seventh night, Just when the yawning grave its dead releases, Filling his bedded wife with sore affright In walk’d his grisly Sprite, In fifty thousand pieces! “O Mary!” so it seem’d In hollow melancholy tone to say, Whilst thro’ its airy shape the moonlight gleam’d With scarcely dimmer ray-- “O Mary! let your hopes no longer flatter, Prepare at once to drink of sorrow’s cup-- It ain’t no use to mince the matter-- The Engine’s chopp’d me up!” TO JOSEPH HUME, ESQ., M.P. “I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.” Oh, Mr. Hume, thy name Is travelling post upon the road to fame, With four fast horses and two sharp postilions; Thy reputation Has friends by numeration, Units, Tens, Hundreds, Thousands, Millions. Whenever public men together dine, They drink to thee With three times three-- That’s nine. And oft a votary proposes then To add unto the cheering one cheer more-- Nine and One are Ten; Or somebody, for thy honour still more keen, Insists on four times four-- Sixteen! In Parliament no star shines more or bigger, And yet thou dost not care to cut a figure; Equally art thou eloquent and able, Whether in showing how to serve the nation Or laying its petitions on the Table Of Multiplication. In motion thou art second unto none, Though fortune on thy motions seems to frown, For though you set a number down You seldom carry one. Great at speech thou art, though some folks cough, But thou art greatest at a _paring_ off. But never blench, Although in stirring up corruption’s worms You make some factions Vulgar as certain fractions, Almost reduced unto their lowest terms. Go on, reform, diminish, and retrench; Go on, for ridicule not caring; Sift on from one to nine with all their noughts, And make state cyphers eat up their own orts, And only in thy saving be unsparing; At soldiers’ uniforms make awful rackets, Don’t trim though, but untrim their jackets. Allow the tin mines no tin tax, Cut off the Great Seal’s wax!