OLD SPIRIT.

"The dirtiest thieves on Nature's face."

YOUNG SPIRIT.

"But hark, what cheers they 're giving Their emperor! - And is he a thief?"

OLD SPIRIT.

"Ay, and a cut-throat too;-in brief, THE GREATEST SCOUNDREL LIVING."

YOUNG SPIRIT.

"But say, what were they praying for, This people and their emperor?"

On wings outspeeding mail or post,
Our sprites o'ertook the Imperial host,
In massacres it wallowed:

A noble nation met its hordes,

But broken fell their cause and swords,
Unfortunate, though hallowed.

They saw a late bombarded town,

Its streets still warm with blood ran down;
Still smoked each burning rafter;

And hideously, 'midst rape and sack,
The murderer's laughter answered back

His prey's convulsive laughter.

They saw the captive eye the dead,
With envy of his gory bed,-

Death's quick reward of bravery:
They heard the clank of chains, and then
Saw thirty thousand bleeding men
Dragged manacled to slavery.

"Fie! fie!" the younger heavenly spark Exclaimed:-"we must have missed our mark. And entered hell's own portals:

Earth can't be stained with crimes so black;
Nay, sure, we've got among a pack

Of fiends, and not of mortals?"

"No," said the elder; "no such thing:
Fiends are not fools enough to wring
The necks of one another:
They know their interests too well:
Men fight; but every devil in hell
Lives friendly with his brother.

And I could point you out some fellows,
On this ill-fated planet Tellus,

In royal power that revel;

Who, at the opening of the book

Of judgment, may have cause to look
With envy at the devil."

Name but the devil, and he'll appear.
Old Satan in a trice was near,

With smutty face and figure:
But spotless spirits of the skies,
Unseen to e'en his saucer eyes,

Could watch the fiendish nigger.

SENEX'S SOLILOQUY ON HIS YOUTHFUL IDOL.

"Halloo!" he cried, "I smell a trick:
A mortal supersedes Old Nick,
The scourge of earth appointed:
He robs me of my trade, outrants
The blasphemy of hell, and vaunts
Himself the Lord's anointed!

Folks make a fuss about my mischief,
Dd fools! they tamely suffer this chief
To play his pranks unbounded."
The cherubs flew; but saw, from high,
At human inhumanity

The devil himself astounded.

335

SENEX'S SOLILOQUY ON HIS YOUTHFUL IDOL.

PLATONIC friendship at your years,

Says Conscience, should content ye:
Nay, name not fondness to her ears,
The darling's scarcely twenty.

Yes, and she 'll loathe me unforgiven,
To dote thus out of season;

But beauty is a beam from heaven,
That dazzles blind our reason.

I'll challenge Plato from the skies,
Yes, from his spheres harmonic,

To look in M-y C's eyes,
And try to be Platonic.

TO SIR FRANCIS BURDETT,

ON HIS SPEECH DELIVERED IN PARLIAMENT, AUGUST 7, 1832, RESPECTING THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

BURDETT, enjoy thy justly foremost fame,

Through good and ill report through calm and storm

For forty years the pilot of reform!

But that which shall afresh entwine thy name

With patriot laurels never to be sere,

Is that thou hast come nobly forth to chide
Our slumbering statesmen for their lack of pride-
Their flattery of Oppressors, and their fear

When Britain's lifted finger, and her frown,
Might call the nations up, and cast their tyrants down!

Invoke the scorn alas! too few inherit

The scorn for despots cherished by our sires,
That baffled Europe's persecuting fires,

And sheltered helpless states! - Recall that spirit,
And conjure back Old England's haughty mind-
Convert the men who waver now, and pause

Between their love of self and humankind;

And move, Amphion-like, those hearts of stone
The hearts that have been deaf to Poland's dying groan!

Tell them we hold the Rights of Man too dear,
To bless ourselves with lonely freedom blest;
But could we hope, with sole and selfish breast,
To breathe untroubled Freedom's atmosphere?-
Suppose we wished it? England could not stand
A lone oasis in the desert ground

Of Europe's slavery; from the waste around,
Oppression's fiery blast and whirling sand

Would reach and scathe us? No; it may not be :
Britannia and the world conjointly must be free!

Burdett, demand why Britons send abroad
Soft greetings to the infanticidal Czar,
The Bear on Poland's babes that wages war.
Once, we are told, a mother's shriek o'erawed
A lion, and he dropped her lifted child;
But Nicholas, whom neither God nor law,
Nor Poland's shrieking mothers, overawe,
Outholds to us his friendship's gory clutch:

[touch!

Shrink, Britain,—shrink, my king and country, from the

He prays to Heaven for England's king, he says-
And dares he to the God of mercy kneel,
Besmeared with massacres from head to heel?
No; Moloch is his god to him he prays;
And if his weird-like prayers had power to bring
An influence, their power would be to curse.
His hate is baleful, but his love is worse

A serpent's slaver deadlier than its sting!
O! feeble statesmen - ignominious times,
That lick the tyrant's feet, and smile upon his crimes!

ODE TO THE GERMANS.

THE spirit of Britannia

Invokes across the main

Her sister Allemannia

To burst the tyrant's chain:
By our kindred blood, she cries,
Rise, Allemannians, rise,