Oh ne'er, since asses spoke of yore,
Such miracles were done;
For, write but four such letters more,
And Freedom's cause is won!
SONG OF THE DEPARTING SPIRIT OF TITHE.
"The parting Genius is with sighing sent."
MILTON.
It is o'er, it is o'er, my reign is o'er;
I hear a Voice, from shore to shore,
From Dunfanaghy to Baltimore,
And it saith, in sad, parsonic tone,
"Great Tithe and Small are dead and gone!"
Even now I behold your vanishing wings,
Ye Tenths of all conceivable things,
Which Adam first, as Doctors deem,
Saw, in a sort of night-mare dream,[1]
After the feast of fruit abhorred--
First indigestion on record!--
Ye decimate ducks, ye chosen chicks,
Ye pigs which, tho' ye be Catholics,
Or of Calvin's most select depraved,
In the Church must have your bacon saved;--
Ye fields, where Labor counts his sheaves,
And, whatsoever _himself_ believes,
Must bow to the Establisht _Church_ belief,
That the tenth is always a _Protestant_ sheaf;--
Ye calves of which the man of Heaven
Takes _Irish_ tithe, one calf in seven;[2]
Ye tenths of rape, hemp, barley, flax,
Eggs, timber, milk, fish and bees' wax;
All things in short since earth's creation,
Doomed, by the Church's dispensation,
To suffer eternal decimation--
Leaving the whole _lay_-world, since then,
Reduced to nine parts out of ten;
Or--as we calculate thefts and arsons--
Just _ten per cent_.
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