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The world it is empty, the heart will die,
There's nothing to wish for beneath the sky;
Thou Holy One, call thy child away!

I've lived and loved, and that was to-day-
Make ready my grave-clothes to-morrow.

LINES.

SUGGESTED BY THE LAST WORDS OF BERENGARIUS OB. ANNO DOM. 1088.

Νο

more 'twixt conscience staggering and the Pope,

Soon shall I now before my God

appear,

By him to be acquitted, as I hope;
By him to be condemned, as I fear.—

REFLECTION ON THE ABOVE.

Lynx amid moles! had I stood by thy bed,
Be of good cheer, meek soul! I would have said:
I see a hope spring from that humble fear.

All are not strong alike through storms to steer
Right onward. What? though dread of threatened

death

And dungeon torture made thy hand and breath Inconstant to the truth within thy heart?

That truth, from which, through fear, thou twice

didst start,

Fear haply told thee, was a learned strife,

Or not so vital as to claim thy life;

And myriads had reached Heaven, who never knew Where lay the difference 'twixt the false and true!

Ye, who secure 'mid trophies not your own,
Judge him who won them when he stood alone,
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 vapors of our morn.

I

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.

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 fixed a broad stare on the Devil's eye-
(Pleased with the guilt, yet envy-stung at heart
To stand outmastered 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 way When courteous

POET.

(Aside.)

(Rome's smooth go-between !)

FRIEND.

Laments the advice that soured a milky queen—
(For "bloody" all enlightened 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,

Yet blames them both-and thinks the Pope might err !

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

Snooth

When the shown feeling points a different way.
can say grace at slander's feast,
And bless each haut-gout cooked 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!

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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-
Scared 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 whiskered jaws!

27*

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 dunghill 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;

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