Well!--be the graceless lineaments confest I do enjoy this bounteous beauteous earth; And dote upon a jest "Within the limits of becoming mirth;"-- No solemn sanctimonious face I pull, Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious-- Nor study in my sanctum supercilious To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull, I pray for grace--repent each sinful act-- Peruse, but underneath the rose, my Bible; And love my neighbor, far too well, in fact, To call and twit him with a godly tract That's turned by application to a libel. My heart ferments not with the bigot's leaven, All creeds I view with toleration thorough, And have a horror of regarding heaven As any body's rotten borough. What else? No part I take in party fray, With tropes from Billingsgate's slang-whanging Tartars, I fear no Pope--and let great Ernest play At Fox and Goose with Fox's Martyrs! I own I laugh at over-righteous men, I own I shake my sides at ranters, And treat sham Abr'am saints with wicked banters, I even own, that there are times--but then It's when I 've got my wine--I say d---- canters! I've no ambition to enact the spy On fellow-souls, a spiritual Pry-- 'Tis said that people ought to guard their noses Who thrust them into matters none of theirs And, though no delicacy discomposes Your saint, yet I consider faith and prayers Among the privatest of men's affairs. I do not hash the Gospel in my books, And thus upon the public mind intrude it, As if I thought, like Otahei-tan cooks, No food was fit to eat till I had chewed it. On Bible stilts I don't affect to stalk; Nor lard with Scripture my familiar talk-- For man may pious texts repeat, And yet religion have no inward seat; 'Tis not so plain as the old Hill of Howth, A man has got his belly full of meat Because he talks with victuals in his mouth! Mere verbiage--it is not worth a carrot! Why, Socrates or Plato--where 's the odds?-- Once taught a Jay to supplicate the gods, And made a Polly-theist of a Parrot! A mere professor, spite of all his cant, is Not a whit better than a Mantis-- An insect, of what clime I can't determine, That lifts its paws most parson-like, and thence, By simple savages--through sheer pretense-- Is reckoned quite a saint among the vermin. But where's the reverence, or where the nous, To ride on one's religion through the lobby, Whether as stalking-horse or hobby, To show its pious paces to "the house." I honestly confess that I would hinder The Scottish member's legislative rigs, That spiritual Pindar, Who looks on erring souls as straying pigs, That must be lashed by law, wherever found, And driven to church as to the parish pound.