Inebriety and the Candidate | Page 2

debate;
Sleep in her woollen mantle wraps the pair,

And sheds her poppies on the ambient air;
Intoxication flies, as
fury fled,
On rooky pinions quits the aching head;
Returning reason
cools the fiery blood,
And drives from memory's seat the rosy god.

Yet still he holds o'er some his maddening rule.
Still sways his
sceptre, and still knows his fool;
Witness the livid lip, and fiery front,

With many a smarting trophy placed upon't;
The hollow eye, which
plays in misty springs,
And the hoarse voice, which rough and broken
rings;
These are his triumphs, and o'er these he reigns,
The blinking
deity of reeling brains.
See Inebriety! her wand she waves,
And lo! her pale, and lo! her
purple slaves!
Sots in embroidery, and sots in crape,
Of every order,
station, rank, and shape:
The king, who nods upon his rattle throne;

The staggering peer, to midnight revel prone;
The slow-tongued
bishop, and the deacon sly,
The humble pensioner, and gownsman
dry;
The proud, the mean, the selfish, and the great,
Swell the dull
throng, and stagger into state.
Lo! proud Flaminius at the splendid board,
The easy chaplain of an
atheist lord,
Quaffs the bright juice, with all the gust of sense,
And
clouds his brain in torpid elegance;
In china vases, see! the sparkling
ill,
From gay decanters view the rosy rill;

The neat-carved pipes in
silver settle laid,
The screw by mathematic cunning made:
Oh,
happy priest! whose God, like Egypt's, lies
At once the deity and
sacrifice.
But is Flaminius then the man alone
To whom the joys of

swimming brains are known?
Lo! the poor toper whose untutor'd
sense,
Sees bliss in ale, and can with wine dispense;
Whose head
proud fancy never taught to steer
Beyond the muddy ecstasies of beer;

But simple nature can her longing quench,
Behind the settle's curve,
or humbler bench:
Some kitchen fire diffusing warmth around,
The
semi-globe by hieroglyphics crown'd;
Where canvas purse displays
the brass enroll'd,
Nor waiters rave, nor landlords thirst for gold;

Ale and content his fancy's bounds confine.
He asks no limpid punch,
no rosy wine;
But sees, admitted to an equal share,
Each faithful
swain the heady potion bear:
Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of taste,

Weigh gout and gravel against ale and rest;
Call vulgar palates
what thou judgest so;
Say beer is heavy, windy, cold, and slow;

Laugh at poor sots with insolent pretence,
Yet cry, when tortured,
where is Providence?
In various forms the madd'ning spirit moves,
This drinks and fights,
another drinks and loves.
A bastard zeal, of different kinds it shows,

And now with rage, and now religion glows:
The frantic soul
bright reason's path defies,
Now creeps on earth, now triumphs in the
skies;
Swims in the seas of error, and explores,
Through midnight
mists, the fluctuating shores;
From wave to wave in rocky channel
glides,
And sinks in woe, or on presumption slides;
In pride exalted,
or by shame deprest,
An angel-devil, or a human-beast.
Some rage in all the strength of folly mad;
Some love stupidity, in
silence clad,
Are never quarrelsome, are never gay,
But sleep, and
groan, and drink the night away;
Old Torpio nods, and as the laugh
goes round,
Grunts through the nasal duct, and joins the sound.

Then sleeps again, and, as the liquors pass,
Wakes at the friendly jog,
and takes his glass:
Alike to him who stands, or reels, or moves,

The elbow chair, good wine, and sleep he loves,
Nor cares of state
disturb his easy head,
By grosser fumes and calmer follies fed;
Nor
thoughts of when, or where, or how to come,
The canvass general, or

the general doom;
Extremes ne'er reach'd one passion of his soul,
A
villain tame, and an unmettled fool;
To half his vices he has but
pretence,
For they usurp the place of common sense;
To half his
little merits has no claim,
For very indolence has raised his name;

Happy in this, that, under Satan's sway,
His passions tremble, but will
not obey.
The vicar at the table's front presides,
Whose presence a monastic life
derides;
The reverend wig, in sideway order placed,
The reverend
band, by rubric stains disgraced,
The leering eye, in wayward circles
roll'd,
Mark him the pastor of a joyial fold,
Whose various texts
excite a loud applause,
Favouring the bottle, and the good old cause.

See! the dull smile which fearfully appears,
When gross indecency
her front uprears,
The joy conceal'd, the fiercer burns within,
As
masks afford the keenest gust to sin;
Imagination helps the reverend
sire,
And spreads the sails of sub-divine desire;
But when the gay
immoral joke goes round,
When shame and all her blushing train are
drown'd,
Rather than hear his God blasphemed, he takes
The last
loved glass, and then the board forsakes.
Not that religion prompts
the sober thought,
But slavish custom has the practice taught;

Besides, this zealous son of warm devotion
Has a true Levite bias for
promotion.
Vicars must with discretion go astray,
Whilst bishops
may be damn'd the nearest way;
So puny robbers individuals kill,

When hector-heroes murder as they will.
Good honest Curio elbows the divine,
And strives a social sinner how
to shine;
The dull quaint tale is his, the lengthen'd tale,
That Wilton
farmers give you with their ale,
How midnight ghosts o'er vaults
terrific pass,
Dance o'er the grave, and slide along the grass;
Or how
pale Cicely within the wood
Call'd Satan forth, and