So, sees and shines, our Moral Sun, The Press,
Alike to vivify the mind, and bless;
Sees the rat Leech turn towards Milan's walls,
'Till the black slime betrays him as he crawls;
Sees, from that recreant, vile, and eunuch-land,
Where felon-perjurers hold their market-stand,
Cooke, with his 'cheek of parchment, eye of stone,'
Get up the evidence, to go well down;
Sees who, with eager hands, the Green Bag cram,
And warns the nation of the frightful flam;
Sees Him, for whom they work the treacherous
task,
With face, scarce half conceal'd, behind their mask.
Fat, fifty-eight, and frisky, still a beau,
Grasping a half-made match; by Leech-light go;
Led by a passion, prurient, blind, and letter'd,
Lame, bloated, pointless, flameless, age'd and
shatter'd;
Creeping, like Guy Fawkes, to blow up his wife,
Whom, spurn'd in youth, he dogs through after-life.
Scorn'd, exiled, baffled, goaded in distress,
She owes her safety to a fearless Press:
With all the freedom that it makes its own,
It guards, alike, the people and their throne;
While fools with darkling eye-balls shun its gaze,
And soaring villains scorch beneath its blaze.
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INDIGNATION
The day will soon come, when the Judge and the
Ponderer,'
Will judge between thee, and the charge-daring
'Wanderer;'
Will say—'Thou who cast the first stone at thy wife,
Art thou without sin, and is spotless thy life?'
Ah! what if thy faults should 'outrival the sloe,'
And thy wife's, beside thine, should look 'whiter
than snow'!
Bethink thee! the old British Lion awoke,
Turns indignant, and treads out thy bag-full of smoke.
Spurn thy minions—the traitors, who counsel thee,
banish;
And the soldiers will quickly forget all their Spanish!