Shapes of Clay

Observe, dear Lord, what lively pranks

Are played by sentimental cranks!

First this one mounts his hinder hoofs

And brays the chimneys off the roofs;

Then that one, with exalted voice,

Expounds the thesis of his choice,

Our understandings to bombard,

Till all the window panes are starred!

A third augments the vocal shock

Till steeples to their bases rock,

Confessing, as they humbly nod,

They hear and mark the will of God.

A fourth in oral thunder vents

His awful penury of sense

Till dogs with sympathetic howls,

And lowing cows, and cackling fowls,

Hens, geese, and all domestic birds,

Attest the wisdom of his words.

Cranks thus their intellects deflate

Of theories about the State.

This one avers 'tis built on Truth,

And that on Temperance. This youth

Declares that Science bears the pile;

That graybeard, with a holy smile,

Says Faith is the supporting stone;

While women swear that Love alone

Could so unflinchingly endure

The heavy load. And some are sure

The solemn vow of Christian Wedlock

Is the indubitable bedrock.

Physicians once about the bed

Of one whose life was nearly sped

Blew up a disputatious breeze

About the cause of his disease:

This, that and t' other thing they blamed.

"Tut, tut!" the dying man exclaimed,

"What made me ill I do not care;

You've not an ounce of it, I'll swear.

And if you had the skill to make it

I'd see you hanged before I'd take it!"