The Works of Peter Pindar [i.e. John Wolcot] :: :: University of Virginia Library

Of certain folks so great the sweet repose;
Running about with horrors, groans and sighs,
And floods, produc'd by onions, in your eyes,
So strong your friendship, and so vast your woes!

Dear humming lords, on friendship bray no more,
Nor thus the bard's depravity deplore;
Lo! like yourselves each man his trumpet bears,
In tame credulity's wide-gaping ears,
Of friendship the sublimity to sound—
Friendship! in dictionaries only found!

Perchaunce, my lords, in foreign parts you've been—
Perchaunce your optics fair Versailles have seen;
Likewise the Vatican with all its state,
And eke th' Escurial, pride of Spain confest;
But, 'midst those scenes, did e'er your eye-balls blest
See a pig hanging in a gate?

If e'er you did this last great sight behold,
You need not, lords, so sapient, to be told
What most untuneful notes the pris'ner makes:
Indeed the hog his mouth and lungs employs
In raising such ear-crucifying noise,
As if he really was transfix'd with stakes.

Now near him should there happen to be hogs
Passing their happy hours among the bogs,
Grunting soft things to their own flesh and blood;
That is, unto their sweethearts and their brides,
Lying like ancient Romans on their sides,
And dining on the dainties of the mud;

Forgetting love, and dainty mud so fatt'ning,
In which they had been batt'ning,
Up leaps the herd of swine for his protection;
Just like the herd that had the devil,
Away they scamper, all so civil,
Resolving or to free him or to die—
Such is of swine the friendly quality,
Although proverbial for brutality!

But when at Newgate to be hung,
A Christian pours a dying song,
I grant that numbers hasten to the wretch,
Most pig-like—but, alas! lift not a hand
To keep him longer in the land,
And snatch him from the talons of Jack Ketch.

No; on the contrary, so fond their eyes
Of seeing how a brother dies,
I, from the bottom of my soul believe,
They would not wish him a reprieve.

Thus, were your good friend Pitt condemn'd to swing—
Nay, ev'n were greater people I could name,
For whom with goodly zeal you seem to flame—
I don't believe you'd wish to cut the string,
Were you but tolerably sure
The next in pow'r would give you sixpence more.

Learn, then, my lords, though with contempt you treat 'em,
Friendship from hogs, as well as eat 'em.

At length my Subjects end, and now
To folly let me make my best court bow—
O goddess, still monopolise the great:
Then oft, to please the palate of the times,
The Muse shall ride to market with her rhimes,
And thrive upon her Helicon estate.