Poor Bacchus is still very ill, they allege,
Having never recovered the Temperance Pledge.
"What, the Irish!" he cried--"those I lookt to the most!
"If they give up the _spirit_, I give up the ghost:"
While Momus, who used of the gods to make fun,
Is turned Socialist now and declares there are none!
But these changes, tho' curious, are all a mere farce
Compared to the new "_casus belli_" of Mars,
Who, for years, has been suffering the horrors of quiet,
Uncheered by one glimmer of bloodshed or riot!
In vain from the clouds his belligerent brow
Did he pop forth, in hopes that somewhere or somehow,
Like Pat at a fair, he might "coax up a row:"
But the joke wouldn't take--the whole world had got wiser;
Men liked not to take a Great Gun for adviser;
And, still less, to march in fine clothes to be shot,
Without very well knowing for whom or for what.
The French, who of slaughter had had their full swing,
Were content with a shot, now and then, at their King;
While, in England, good fighting's a pastime so hard to gain,
Nobody's left to fight _with_, but Lord Cardigan.
'Tis needless to say then how monstrously happy
Old Mars has been made by what's now on the _tapis_;
How much it delights him to see the French rally,
In Liberty's name, around Mehemet Ali;
Well knowing that Satan himself could not find
A confection of mischief much more to his mind
Than the old _Bonnet Rouge_ and the Bashaw combined.
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