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From fustian hose enticed by burnings
Of Bengal lights—no more, alas!
Of Lutheran lime and Arian gas,
But still with powder, bang and blaze,
A pale reflex of other days:
A third and last was now appended
Which with the other twain contended
In cutting short the firework mission
And bringing Popery to derision:
Most fatal third, the rise of prices
Out west, had brought things to a crisis
By pumping dry th’ Hibernian sluice
That once was like the widow’s cruse
(The good old soul lived near Mount Carmel)
A never-failing source of palm-oil!
Not that the sudden running dry
Of Patrick’s well can be ascri-
bed, if truth be told, quite altogether
To the tariff—two other forces
Were acting with it,—one, the sources
Themselves to choke and one to ti-
ce, those healing waters otherwhither.
Rome’s harpies teach, though, to be sure,
Themselves—but that’s a sine cure—
Rifle the pockets of the poor
Without compunction, of the sever
Most deadly sins which forfeit heaven:
The worst of all is to defraud
The poor man of his toil’s reward,
“His labours’ fruits” the Church’s phrase is
(The penalty’s the usual blazes)
Which, perhaps, but means, with due reserves,
