Scarce had her fingers touched the torch.
When, frighted by the sparks it shed, Nor waiting even to feel the scorch, She dropt it to the earth--and fled.
And fallen it might have long remained; But GREECE, who saw her moment now, Caught up the prize, tho" prostrate, stained, And waved it round her beauteous brow.
And Fancy bade me mark where, o"er Her altar, as its flame ascended, Fair, laurelled spirits seemed to soar, Who thus in song their voices blended:--
"Shine, shine for ever, glorious Flame, "Divinest gift of G.o.ds to men!
"From GREECE thy earliest splendor came, "To GREECE thy ray returns again.
"Take, Freedom, take thy radiant round, "When _dimmed_, revive, when lost, return, "Till not a shrine thro" earth be found, "On which thy glories shall not burn."
FABLE IV.
THE FLY AND THE BULLOCK.
PROEM.
Of all that, to the sage"s survey, This world presents of topsy-turvy, There"s naught so much disturbs one"s patience, As little minds in lofty stations.
"Tis like that sort of painful wonder.
Which slender columns, laboring under Enormous arches, give beholders;-- Or those poor Caryatides, Condemned to smile and stand at ease, With a whole house upon their shoulders.
If as in some few royal cases, Small minds are _born_ into such places-- If they are there by Right Divine Or any such sufficient reason, Why--Heaven forbid we should repine!-- To wish it otherwise were treason; Nay, even to see it in a vision, Would be what lawyers call _misprision_.
SIR ROBERT FILMER saith--and he, Of course, knew all about the matter-- "Both men and beasts love Monarchy;"
Which proves how rational the latter.
SIDNEY, we know, or wrong or right.
Entirely differed from the Knight: Nay, hints a King may lose his head.
By slipping awkwardly his bridle:-- But this is treasonous, ill-bred, And (now-a-days, when Kings are led In patent snaffles) downright idle.
No, no--it isn?t right-line Kings, (Those sovereign lords in leading strings Who, from their birth, are Faith-Defenders,) That move my wrath--"tis your pretenders, Your mushroom rulers, sons of earth, Who--not, like t"others, bores by birth, Establisht _gratia Dei_ blockheads, Born with three kingdoms in their pockets-- Yet, with a bra.s.s that nothing stops, Push up into the loftiest stations, And, tho" too dull to manage shops, Presume, the dolts, to manage nations!
This cla.s.s it is, that moves my gall, And stirs up bile, and spleen and all.
While other senseless things appear To know the limits of their sphere-- While not a cow on earth romances So much as to conceit she dances-- While the most jumping frog we know of, Would scarce at Astley"s hope to show off-- Your ***s, your ***s dare, Untrained as are their minds, to set them To _any_ business, _any_ where, At _any_ time that fools will let them.
But leave we here these upstart things-- My business is just now with Kings; To whom and to their right-line glory, I dedicate the following story.
FABLE
The wise men of Egypt were secret as dummies; And even when they most condescended to teach, They packt up their meaning, as they did their mummies, In so many wrappers, "twas out of one"s reach.
They were also, good people, much given to Kings-- Fond of craft and of crocodiles, monkeys and mystery; But blue-bottle flies were their best beloved things-- As will partly appear in this very short history.
A Scythian philosopher (nephew, they say, To that other great traveller, young Anacharsis,) Stept into a temple at Memphis one day, To have a short peep at their mystical farces.
He saw a brisk blue-bottle Fly on an altar, Made much of, and worshipt, as something divine; While a large, handsome Bullock, led there in a halter, Before it lay stabbed at the foot of the shrine.
Surprised at such doings, he whispered his teacher-- "If "tisn"t impertinent, may I ask why "Should a Bullock, that useful and powerful creature, "Be thus offered up to a bluebottle Fly?"
"No wonder"--said t"other--"you stare at the sight, "But we as a Symbol of Monarchy view it-- "That Fly on the shrine is Legitimate Right, "And that Bullock, the People that"s sacrificed to it."
FABLE V.
CHURCH AND STATE.
PROEM
"The moment any religion becomes national, or established, its purity must certainly be lost, because it is then impossible to keep it unconnected with men"s interests; and, if connected, it must inevitably be perverted by them."
--SOAME JENYNS
Thus did SOAME JENYNS--tho" a Tory, A Lord of Trade and the Plantations; Feel how Religion"s simple glory Is stained by State a.s.sociations.
When CATHARINE, ere she crusht the Poles, Appealed to the benign Divinity; Then cut them up in protocols, Made fractions of their very souls-- All in the name of the blest Trinity; Or when her grandson, ALEXANDER, That mighty Northern salamander,[1]
Whose icy touch, felt all about, Puts every fire of Freedom out-- When he, too, winds up his Ukases With G.o.d and the Panagia"s praises-- When he, of royal Saints the type, In holy water dips the sponge, With which, at one imperial wipe, He would all human rights expunge; When LOUIS (whom as King, and eater, Some name _Dix-huit_, and some _Deshuitres_.) Calls down "St. Louis"s G.o.d" to witness The right, humanity, and fitness Of sending eighty thousand Solons, Sages with muskets and laced coats, To cram instruction, _nolens volens_, Down the poor struggling Spaniards" throats-- I can?t help thinking, (tho" to Kings I must, of course, like other men, bow,) That when a Christian monarch brings Religion"s name to gloss these things-- Such blasphemy out-Benbows Benbow![2]
Or--not so far for facts to roam, Having a few much nearer home- When we see Churchmen, who, if askt, "Must Ireland"s slaves be t.i.thed, and taskt, "And driven, like Negroes or Croats, "That _you_ may roll in wealth and bliss?"
Look from beneath their shovel hats With all due pomp and answer "Yes!"
But then, if questioned, "Shall the brand "Intolerance flings throughout that land,-- "Shall the fierce strife now taught to grow "Betwixt her palaces and hovels, "Be ever quenched?"--from the same shovels Look grandly forth and answer "No."-- Alas, alas! have _these_ a claim To merciful Religion"s name?
If more you seek, go see a bevy Of bowing parsons at a levee-- (Choosing your time, when straw"s before Some apoplectic bishop"s door,) Then if thou canst with life escape That rush of lawn, that press of c.r.a.pe, Just watch their reverences and graces, As on each smirking suitor frisks, And say, if those round shining faces To heaven or earth most turn their disks?
This, this it is--Religion, made, Twixt Church and State, a truck, a trade-- This most ill-matched, unholy _Co_., From whence the ills we witness flow; The war of many creeds with one-- The extremes of _too_ much faith and none-- Till, betwixt ancient trash and new, "Twixt Cant and Blasphemy--the two Rank ills with which this age is curst-- We can no more tell which is worst, Than erst could Egypt, when so rich In various plagues, determine which She thought most pestilent and vile, Her frogs, like Benbow and Carlisle, Croaking their native mud-notes loud, Or her fat locusts, like a cloud Of pluralists, obesely lowering, At once benighting and devouring!--
This--this it is--and here I pray Those sapient wits of the Reviews.
Who make us poor, dull authors say, Not what we mean, but what they choose; Who to our most abundant shares Of nonsense add still more of theirs, And are to poets just such evils As caterpillars find those flies,[3]
Which, not content to sting like devils, Lay eggs upon their backs like wise-- To guard against such foul deposits Of other"s meaning in my rhymes, (A thing more needful here because it"s A subject, ticklish in these times)-- I, here, to all such wits make known, Monthly and Weekly, Whig and Tory, "Tis _this_ Religion--this alone-- I aim at in the following story:--
FABLE.
When Royalty was young and bold, Ere, touched by Time, he had become-- If "tisn"t civil to say _old_, At least, a _ci-devant jeune homme_;
One evening, on some wild pursuit Driving along, he chanced to see Religion, pa.s.sing by on foot, And took him in his vis-a-vis.
This said Religion was a Friar, The humblest and the best of men, Who ne"er had notion or desire Of riding in a coach till then.
"I say"--quoth Royalty, who rather Enjoyed a masquerading joke-- "I say, suppose, my good old father, "You lend me for a while your cloak."