The political and occasional poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed ::

If you were placed in some rude station
Where no man sighs for stars or garters,
Where Papists shrink from agitation,
And Whigs have some respect for charters,
Still, still, Lord Grey, I'd not be guessing
Why, in your foolish prides and glories,
You'd keep a friend without a blessing,
Placeless and payless, with the Tories.

Ah, don't you see with what barbarity
The members all around me treat me?
Knight's look is not a look of charity;
Sir Edward Sugden longs to beat me;
Croker, bad luck to him, is witty,
And Wetherell is entirely teazing,
And Peel, without a spark of pity,
Sets, now and then, my heart's blood freezing.

150

Och! don't be proud! Sure, cool reflection
Should cure your scoffing and your scorning;
The wheel may turn, and my affection,
Just like the Bill, get lost, some morning:
And though the Duke might look severely
On me and my Associators,
Musha! your father's son should dearly
Esteem all demagogues and traitors.

Be warned; though you are cold and cruel,
Though deputations don't persuade you,
Though you are yet unshaken, jewel,
By all the compliments I've paid you;
Though you are deaf to Grattan's speeches
Which flow as ceaseless as the Shannon,
And blind to those unwilling breaches
Of discipline in sad Duncannon,

Be wise in time. O stubborn-hearted!
Regardless, as an oak, of blarney!
Deaf, as the adders, that departed
Some years ago, from sweet Killarney!
Be wise in time! You won't? Oh murther!
An't we all patriots, stout and manly?
My Lord, we won't put up much further
With bows, and frowns, and Master Stanley.

University of Virginia Library

VIII. THE BEGGAR'S PETITION.