"--
Alas, alas! have _these_ a claim
To merciful Religion's name?
If more you seek, go see a bevy
Of bowing parsons at a levee--
(Choosing your time, when straw's before
Some apoplectic bishop's door,)
Then if thou canst with life escape
That rush of lawn, that press of crape,
Just watch their reverences and graces,
As on each smirking suitor frisks,
And say, if those round shining faces
To heaven or earth most turn their disks?
This, this it is--Religion, made,
Twixt Church and State, a truck, a trade--
This most ill-matched, unholy _Co_.,
From whence the ills we witness flow;
The war of many creeds with one--
The extremes of _too_ much faith and none--
Till, betwixt ancient trash and new,
'Twixt Cant and Blasphemy--the two
Rank ills with which this age is curst--
We can no more tell which is worst,
Than erst could Egypt, when so rich
In various plagues, determine which
She thought most pestilent and vile,
Her frogs, like Benbow and Carlisle,
Croaking their native mud-notes loud,
Or her fat locusts, like a cloud
Of pluralists, obesely lowering,
At once benighting and devouring!--
This--this it is--and here I pray
Those sapient wits of the Reviews.
Who make us poor, dull authors say,
Not what we mean, but what they choose;
Who to our most abundant shares
Of nonsense add still more of theirs,
And are to poets just such evils
As caterpillars find those flies,[3]
Which, not content to sting like devils,
Lay eggs upon their backs like wise--
To guard against such foul deposits
Of other's meaning in my rhymes,
(A thing more needful here because it's
A subject, ticklish in these times)--
I, here, to all such wits make known,
Monthly and Weekly, Whig and Tory,
'Tis _this_ Religion--this alone--
I aim at in the following story:--
FABLE.
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