Parliamentary Oscillators

  1. 1Almost awake? Why, what is this, and whence,
  2. 2O ye right loyal men, all undefiléd?
  3. 3Sure, 'tis not possible that Common-Sense
  4. 4Has hitch'd her pullies to each heavy eye-lid?
  1. 5Yet wherefore else that start, which discomposes
  2. 6The drowsy waters lingering in your eye?
  3. 7And are you really able to descry
  4. 8That precipice three yards beyond your noses?
  1. 9Yet flatter you I cannot, that your wit
  2. 10Is much improved by this long loyal dozing;
  3. 11And I admire, no more than Mr. Pitt,
  4. 12Your jumps and starts of patriotic prosing--
  1. 13Now cluttering to the Treasury Cluck, like chicken,
  2. 14Now with small beaks the ravenous Bill opposing;
  3. 15With serpent-tongue now stinging, and now licking,
  4. 16Now semi-sibilant, now smoothly glozing--
  1. 17Now having faith implicit that he can't err,
  2. 18Hoping his hopes, alarm'd with his alarms;
  3. 19And now believing him a sly inchanter,
  4. 20Yet still afraid to break his brittle charms,
  1. 21Lest some mad Devil suddenly unhamp'ring,
  2. 22Slap-dash! the imp should fly off with the steeple,
  3. 23On revolutionary broom-stick scampering.--
  4. 24O ye soft-headed and soft-hearted people,
  1. 25If you can stay so long from slumber free,
  2. 26My muse shall make an effort to salute 'e:
  3. 27For lo! a very dainty simile
  4. 28Flash'd sudden through my brain, and 'twill just suit 'e!
  1. 29You know that water-fowl that cries, Quack! Quack!?
  2. 30Full often have I seen a waggish crew
  3. 31Fasten the Bird of Wisdom on its back,
  4. 32The ivy-haunting bird, that cries, Tu-whoo!
  1. 33Both plung'd together in the deep mill-stream,
  2. 34(Mill-stream, or farm-yard pond, or mountain-lake,)
  3. 35Shrill, as a Church and Constitution scream,
  4. 36Tu-whoo! quoth Broad-face, and down dives the Drake!
  1. 37The green-neck'd Drake once more pops up to view,
  2. 38Stares round, cries Quack! and makes an angry pother;
  3. 39Then shriller screams the Bird with eye-lids blue,
  4. 40The broad-faced Bird! and deeper dives the other.
  5. 41Ye quacking Statesmen! 'tis even so with you--
  6. 42One Peasecod is not liker to another.
  1. 43Even so on Loyalty's Decoy-pond, each
  2. 44Pops up his head, as fir'd with British blood,
  3. 45Hears once again the Ministerial screech,
  4. 46And once more seeks the bottom's blackest mud!
Signed: LABERIUS.