Each waiting eye shall humbly bend,
And reverence on your steps attend.
But when each point of serious weight
Is torn with wrangling and debate,
When truth, mid rage of dire divisions,
Is left, to fight for definitions,
And fools assume your sacred place,
It threats your order with disgrace;
Bids genius from your seats withdraw,
And seek the pert, loquacious law;
Or deign in physic's paths to rank,
With every quack and mountebank;
Or in the ways of trade content,
Plod ledgers o'er of cent. per cent.
While in your seats so sacred, whence
We look for piety and sense,
Pert dulness raves in school-boy style,
Your friends must blush, your foes will smile;
While men, who teach the glorious way,
Where heaven unfolds celestial day,
Assume the task sublime, to bring
The message of th' Eternal King,
Disgrace those honours they receive,
And want that sense, they aim to give,
Now in the desk, with solemn air,
Our hero makes his audience stare;
Asserts with all dogmatic boldness,
Where impudence is yoked to dulness;
Reads o'er his notes with halting pace,
Mask'd in the stiffness of his face;
With gestures such as might become
Those statues once that spoke at Rome,
Or Livy's ox,* that to the state
Declared the oracles of fate,
In awkward tones, nor said, nor sung,
Slow rumbling o'er the falt'ring tongue,
Two hours his drawling speech holds on,
And names it preaching, when he's done.
With roving tired, he fixes down
For life, in some unsettled town.
People and priest full well agree,
For why-they know no more than he.
Vast tracts of unknown land he gains,
Better than those the moon contains;
There deals in preaching and in prayer,
And starves on sixty pounds a year,
And culls his texts, and tills his farm,
Does little good, and little harm;
On Sunday, in his best array,
Deals forth the dulness of the day,
And while above he spends his breath,
The yawning audience nod beneath.
Thus glib-tongued Merc'ry in his hand
Stretch'd forth the sleep-compelling wand,
Each eye in endless doze to keep-
The God of speaking, and of sleep.
OR THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF
"TWAS in a town remote, the place
We leave the reader wise to guess,
(For readers wise can guess full well
What authors never meant to tell,)
There dwelt secure a country clown,
The wealthiest farmer of the town.
Though rich by villany and cheats,
He bought respect by frequent treats;
Gain'd offices by constant seeking,
'Squire, captain, deputy and deacon ;
Great was his power, his pride as arrant
One only son his heir apparent.
*First printed at New-Haven, January 1773.
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