The Humourous Poetry of the English Language

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Resemble copper wire or brass,
Which gets the narrower by going further!
Worthless are all such pilgrimages--very!
If Palmers at the Holy Tomb contrive
The humans heats and rancor to revive
That at the Sepulcher they ought to bury.
A sorry sight it is to rest the eye on,
To see a Christian creature graze at Sion,
Then homeward, of the saintly pasture full,
Rush bellowing, and breathing fire and smoke,
At crippled Papistry to butt and poke,
Exactly as a skittish Scottish bull
Haunts an old woman in a scarlet cloak.
Why leave a serious, moral, pious home,
Scotland, renewned for sanctity of old,
Far distant Catholics to rate and scold
For--doing as the Romans do at Rome?
With such a bristling spirit wherefore quit
The Land of Cakes for any land of wafers,
About the graceless images to flit,
And buzz and chafe importunate as chafers,
Longing to carve the carvers to Scotch collops?--
People who hold such absolute opinions
Should stay at home in Protestant dominions,
Not travel like male Mrs. Trollopes.
Gifted with noble tendency to climb,
Yet weak at the same time,
Faith is a kind of parasitic plant,
That grasps the nearest stem with tendril rings;
And as the climate and the soil may grant,
So is the sort of tree to which it clings.
Consider, then, before, like Hurlothrumbo,
You aim your club at any creed on earth,
That, by the simple accident of birth,
YOU might have been High Priest to Mungo Jumbo.
For me--through heathen ignorance perchance,
Not having knelt in Palestine,--I feel