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 turn'd 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 anybody's rotten borough. What else? no part I take in party fray, With troops from Billingsgate's slang-whanging tartars, I fear no Pope--and let great Ernest play At Fox and Goose with Foxs' 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 tho' no delicacy discomposes Your Saint, yet I consider faith and pray'rs Amongst 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 Otaheitan 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--thro' sheer pretence-- Is reckon'd quite a saint amongst the vermin. But where's the reverence, or where the _nous_, To ride on one's religion thro' the lobby, Whether a 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 Pinder, Who looks on erring souls as straying pigs, That must be lash'd by law, wherever found, And driv'n to church, as to the parish pound. I do confess, without reserve or wheedle, I view that grovelling idea as one Worthy some parish clerk's ambitious son, A charity-boy, who longs to be a beadle.