“Sweeping our flocks and herds.”—Douglas.
PHILANTHROPIC men!—
For this address I need not make apology—
Who aim at clearing out the Smithfield pen,
And planting further off its vile Zoology—
Permit me thus to tell,
I like your efforts well,
For routing that great nest of Hornithology!
Be not dismay’d although repulsed at first,
And driven from their Horse, and Pig, and Lamb parts,
Charge on!—you shall upon their hornworks burst,
And carry all their Bull-warks and their Ram-parts.
Go on, ye wholesale drovers!
And drive away the Smithfield flocks and herds!
As wild as Tartar-Curds,
That come so fat, and kicking, from their clovers,
Off with them all!—those restive brutes, that vex
Our streets, and plunge, and lunge, and butt, and battle;
And save the female sex
From being cow’d—like Iö—by the cattle!
Fancy,—when droves appear on
The hill of Holborn, roaring from its top,—
Your ladies—ready, as they own, to drop,
Taking themselves to Thomson’s with a Fear-on!
Or, in St. Martin’s Lane,
Scared by a Bullock, in a frisky vein,—
Fancy the terror of your timid daughters
While rushing souse
Into a coffee-house,
To find it—Slaughter’s.
Or fancy this:—
Walking along the street, some stranger Miss,
Her head with no such thought of danger laden,
When suddenly ’tis “Aries Taurus Virgo!”
You don’t know Latin, I translate it ergo,
Into your Areas a Bull throws the Maiden!
Think of some poor old crone
Treated, just like a penny, with a toss!
At that vile spot now grown
So generally known
For making a Cow Cross!
Nay, fancy your own selves far off from stall,
Or shed, or shop—and that an Ox infuriate
Just pins you to the wall,
Giving you a strong dose of Oxy-Muriate!
Methinks I hear the neighbours that live round
The Market-ground
Thus make appeal unto their civic fellows—
“’Tis well for you that live apart—unable
To hear this brutal Babel,
But our firesides are troubled with their bellows.