They saw a late bombarded town,

Its streets still warm with blood ran down;
Still smoked each burning rafter;

And hideously, 'midst rape and sack,
The murderer's laughter answered back
His prey's convulsive laughter.

They saw the captive eye the dead,
With envy of his gory bed,—

Death's quick reward of bravery:
They heard the clank of chains, and then
Saw thirty thousand bleeding men
Dragged manacled to slavery.

"Fie! fie!" the younger heavenly spark

66

Exclaimed: we must have missed our mark,

And entered hell's own portals:

Earth can't be stained with crimes so black;

Nay, sure, we've got among a pack

Of fiends, and not of mortals."

"No," said the elder; "no such thing:
Fiends are not fools enough to wring
The necks of one another :—
They know their interests too well:
Men fight; but every devil in hell
Lives friendly with his brother.

And I could point you out some fellows,
On this ill-fated planet Tellus,

In royal power that revel;

Who, at the opening of the book

Of judgment, may have cause to look

With envy at the devil."

Name but the devil, and he'll appear.
Old Satan in a trice was near,

With smutty face and figure:
But spotless spirits of the skies,
Unseen to e'en his saucer eyes,

Could watch the fiendish nigger.

"Halloo!" he cried, "I smell a trick:
A mortal supersedes Old Nick,

The scourge of earth appointed :
He robs me of my trade, outrants
The blasphemy of hell, and vaunts
Himself the Lord's anointed.

Folks make a fuss about my mischief:
D―d fools, they tamely suffer this chief
To play his pranks unbounded."

The cherubs flew; but saw from high,
At human inhumanity,

The devil himself astounded.

SENEX'S SOLILOQUY ON HIS YOUTHFUL IDOL.

PLATONIC friendship at your years,

Says Conscience, should content ye :
Nay, name not fondness to her ears,
The darling's scarcely twenty.

Yes, and she'll loathe me unforgiven,
To dote thus out of season;
But beauty is a beam from heaven,

That dazzles blind our reason.

I'll challenge Plato from the skies,
Yes, from his spheres harmonic,
To look in M-y C's eyes,
And try to be Platonic.

TO SIR FRANCIS BURDETT,

ON HIS SPEECH DELIVERED IN PARLIAMENT, AUGUST 7, 1832, RESPECTING THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

BURDETT, enjoy thy justly foremost fame,

Through good and ill report-through calm and storm-
For forty years the pilot of reform!

But that which shall afresh entwine thy name
With patriot laurels never to be sere,

Is that thou hast come nobly forth to chide

Our slumbering statesmen for their lack of pride—
Their flattery of Oppressors, and their fear—

When Britain's lifted finger, and her frown,

Might call the nations up, and cast their tyrants down!

Invoke the scorn- -Alas! too few inherit

The scorn for despots cherished by our sires,
That baffled Europe's persecuting fires,

And sheltered helpless states !-Recal that spirit,
And conjure back Old England's haughty mind—
Convert the men who waver now, and pause

Between their love of self and human kind;

And move, Amphion-like, those hearts of stone-
The hearts that have been deaf to Poland's dying groan!

Tell them, we hold the Rights of Man too dear,
To bless ourselves with lonely freedom blest;

But could we hope, with sole and selfish breast,
To breathe untroubled Freedom's atmosphere?-
Suppose we wished it? England could not stand
A lone oasis in the desert ground

Of Europe's slavery; from the waste around

Oppression's fiery blast and whirling sand Would reach and scathe us! No; it may not be : Britannia and the world conjointly must be free!

Burdett, demand why Britons send abroad
Soft greetings to th' infanticidal Czar,

The Bear on Poland's babes that wages war.
Once, we are told, a mother's shriek o'erawed
A lion, and he dropt her lifted child;
But Nicholas, whom neither God nor law,
Nor Poland's shrieking mothers overawe,
Outholds to us his friendship's gory clutch:

Shrink, Britain-shrink, my king and country, from the touch!

He prays to Heaven for England's king, he says-
And dares he to the God of mercy kneel,

Besmeared with massacres from head to heel?
No; Moloch is his god-to him he prays;

And if his weird-like prayers had power to bring
An influence, their power would be to curse.
His hate is baleful, but his love is worse-
A serpent's slaver deadlier than its sting!
Oh, feeble statesmen-ignominious times,

That lick the tyrant's feet, and smile upon his crimes!