Ushers of Beelzebub's Black Rod,
Commending sinners not to ice thick-ribbed,
But endless flames, to scorch them like flax,-
Yet sure of heaven themselves, as if they'd cribbed
The impression of St. Peter's keys in wax!

Of such a character no single trace
Exists, I know, in my fictitious face;
There wants a certain cast about the eye;
A certain lifting of the nose's tip;
A certain curling of the nether lip,
In scorn of all that is, beneath the sky;
In brief, it is an aspect deleterious,
A face decidedly not serious,

A face profane, that would not do at all

To make a face at Exeter Hall,

That Hall where bigots rant, and cant, and pray.
And laud each other face to face,

Till every farthing-candle ray

Conceives itself a great gas-light of grace!

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.

grace

I pray for
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 anybody'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

"T is 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
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 through sheer pretence —
Is reckoned quite a saint amongst 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.
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.
On such a vital topic sure 'tis odd

How much a man can differ from his neighbor;
One wishes worship freely given to God,
Another wants to make it statute-labor
The broad distinction in a line to draw,
As means to lead us to the skies above,
You say-Sir Andrew and his love of law.
And I the Saviour with his law of love.
Spontaneously to God should tend the soul,
Like the magnetic needle to the Pole;

But what were that intrinsic virtue worth,

Suppose some fellow, with more zeal than knowledge, Fresh from St. Andrew's college,

Should nail the conscious needle to the north?

I do confess that I abhor and shrink

From schemes, with a religious willy-nilly,
That frown upon St. Giles's sins, but blink
The peccadilloes of all Piccadilly -
My soul revolts at such bare hypocrisy,
And will not, dare not, fancy in accord
The Lord of Hosts with an exclusive lord
Of this world's aristocracy.

It will not own a notion so unholy,

As thinking that the rich by easy trips
May go to heaven, whereas the poor and lowly
Must work their passage, as they do in ships.
One place there is-beneath the burial-sod,
Where all mankind are equalized by death;
Another place there is-the Fane of God,
Where all are equal who draw living breath ;-
Juggle who will elsewhere with his own soul,
Playing the Judas with a temporal dole—
He who can come beneath that awful cope,
In the dread presence of a Maker just,
Who metes to every pinch of human dust
One even measure of immortal hope-
He who can stand within that holy door,
With soul unbowed by that pure spirit-level,
And frame unequal laws for rich and poor,-
Might sit for Hell, and represent the Devil!
Such are the solemn sentiments, O Rae,
In your last journey-work, perchance, you ravage,
Seeming, but in more courtly terms, to say
I'm but a heedless, creedless, godless, savage;

A very Guy, deserving fire and fagots,-
A scoffer, always on the grin,

And sadly given to the mortal sin

Of liking Mawworms less than merry maggots!
The humble records of my life to search,

I have not herded with mere pagan beasts;

But sometimes I have "sat at good men's feasts,"
And I have been "where bells have knolled to church."
Dear bells how sweet the sound of village bells

When on the undulating air they swim!

Now loud as welcomes! faint, now, as farewells!
And trembling all about the breezy dells,
As fluttered by the wings of Cherubim.
Meanwhile the bees are chanting a low hymn;
And lost to sight the ecstatic lark above
Sings, like a soul beatified, of love,

With, now and then, the coo of the wild pigeon :-
0 pagans, heathens, infidels, and doubters!
If such sweet sounds can't woo you to religion,
Will the harsh voices of church cads and touters?
A man may cry Church! Church! at every word,
With no more piety than other people-
A daw's not reckoned a religious bird
Because it keeps a-cawing from a steeple ;
The Temple is a good, a holy place,
But quacking only gives it an ill savor;
While saintly mountebanks the porch disgrace,
And bring religion's self into disfavor!

Behold yon servitor of God and Mammon.
Who, binding up his Bible with his ledger,
Blends Gospel texts with trading gammon,
A black-leg saint, a spiritual hedger,