The Humourous Poetry of the English Language

297
Why, zounds! what raised so Protestant a fuss
(Omit the zounds! for which I make apology)
But that the Papists, like some Fellows, thus
Had somehow mixed up Deus with their Theology?
Is Brahma's Bull--a Hindoo god at home--
A Papal Bull to be tied up till Monday?--
Or Leo, like his namesake, Pope of Rome,
That there is such a dread of them on Sunday--
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
Spirit of Kant! have we not had enough
To make Religion sad, and sour, and snubbish,
But Saints Zoological must cant their stuff,
As vessels cant their ballast-rattling rubbish!
Once let the sect, triumphant to their text,
Shut Nero up from Saturday till Monday,
And sure as fate they will deny us next
To see the Dandelions on a Sunday--
But what is your opinion, Mrs, Grundy?
ODE TO RAE WILSON, ESQUIRE
[Footnote: Who had, in one of his books, characterized some of Hood's
verses as "profaneness and ribaldry."]
THOMAS HOOD.
"Close, close your eyes with holy dread,
And weave a circle round him thrice;
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise!"--Coleridge.
"It's very hard them kind of men
Won't let a body be."--Old Ballad.
A wanderer, Wilson, from my native land,
Remote, O Rae, from godliness and thee,
Where rolls between us the eternal sea,
Besides some furlongs of a foreign sand--