They pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide.
By land, by water, they renew the charge;
They stop the chariot, and they board the barge.
No place is sacred, not the church is free;
Ev’n Sunday shines no Sabbath-day to me;
Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme,
Happy to catch me—just at dinner-time.
Is there a parson much bemus’d in beer,
A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer,
A clerk foredoom’d his father’s soul to cross,