________________________________________________
Title: Parliamentary Oscillators
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge [
More Titles by Coleridge]
Almost awake? Why, what is this, and whence,
O ye right loyal men, all undefiléd?
Sure, 'tis not possible that Common-Sense
Has hitch'd her pullies to each heavy eye-lid?
Yet wherefore else that start, which discomposes
The drowsy waters lingering in your eye?
And are you _really_ able to descry
That precipice three yards beyond your noses?
Yet flatter you I cannot, that your wit
Is much improved by this long loyal dozing;
And I admire, no more than Mr. Pitt,
Your jumps and starts of patriotic prosing--
Now cluttering to the Treasury Cluck, like chicken,
Now with small beaks the ravenous _Bill_ opposing;
With serpent-tongue now stinging, and now licking,
Now semi-sibilant, now smoothly glozing--
Now having faith implicit that he can't err,
Hoping his hopes, alarm'd with his alarms;
And now believing him a sly inchanter,
Yet still afraid to break his brittle charms,
Lest some mad Devil suddenly unhamp'ring,
Slap-dash! the imp should fly off with the steeple,
On revolutionary broom-stick scampering.--
O ye soft-headed and soft-hearted people,
If you can stay so long from slumber free,
My muse shall make an effort to salute 'e:
For lo! a very dainty simile
Flash'd sudden through my brain, and 'twill just suit 'e!
You know that water-fowl that cries, Quack! Quack!?
Full often have I seen a waggish crew
Fasten the Bird of Wisdom on its back,
The ivy-haunting bird, that cries, Tu-whoo!
Both plung'd together in the deep mill-stream,
(Mill-stream, or farm-yard pond, or mountain-lake,)
Shrill, as a _Church and Constitution_ scream,
Tu-whoo! quoth Broad-face, and down dives the Drake!
The green-neck'd Drake once more pops up to view,
Stares round, cries Quack! and makes an angry pother;
Then shriller screams the Bird with eye-lids blue,
The broad-faced Bird! and deeper dives the other.
Ye _quacking_ Statesmen! 'tis even so with you--
One Peasecod is not liker to another.
Even so on Loyalty's Decoy-pond, each
Pops up his head, as fir'd with British blood,
Hears once again the Ministerial screech,
And once more seeks the bottom's blackest mud!
1798.
[Signed: LABERIUS.)
[The end]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem: Parliamentary Oscillators
________________________________________________
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
