SONG OF THE DEPARTING SPIRIT OF
"The parting Genius is with sighing sent.
It is o'er, it is o'er, my reign is o'er;
I hear a Voice, from shore to shore,
From Dunfanaghy to Baltimore,
And it saith, in sad, parsonic tone,
"Great Tithe and Small are dead and gone!"
Even now, I behold your vanishing wings,
Ye Tenths of all conceivable things,
Which Adam first, as Doctors deem,
Saw, in a sort of night-mare dream*,
After the feast of fruit abhorr'd-
First indigestion on record!
Ye decimate ducks, ye chosen chicks,
Ye pigs which, though ye be Catholics,
* A reverend prebendary of Hereford, in an Essay on the Revenues of the Church of England, has assigned the origin of Tithes to "some unrecorded revelation made to Adam."
Or of Calvin's most select deprav'd,
In the Church must have your bacon sav'd;-
Ye fields, where Labour counts his sheaves,
And, whatsoever himself believes,
Must bow to the' Establish'd Church belief,
That the tenth is always a Protestant sheaf ;-
Ye calves, of which the man of Heaven
Takes Irish tithe, one calf in seven*;
Ye tenths of rape, hemp, barley, flax,
Eggst, timber, milk, fish, and bees' wax;
All things, in short, since earth's creation,
Doom'd, by the Church's dispensation,
To suffer eternal decimation
Leaving the whole lay-world, since then,
Reduc'd to nine parts out of ten;
Or as we calculate thefts and arsons—
Just ten per cent. the worse for Parsons!
# "The tenth calf is due to the parson of common right; and if there are seven he shall have one."— REES's Cyclopædia, art. "Tithes."
† Chaucer's Plowman complains of the parish rectors, that "For the tithing of a duck,
Or an apple, or an aye (egg),
They make him swear upon a boke;
Thus they foulen Christ's fay."
Alas, and is all this wise device
For the saving of souls thus gone in a trice?
The whole put down, in the simplest way,
By the souls resolving not to pay!
And even the Papists, thankless race,
Who have had so much the easiest case-
To pay for our sermons doom'd, 'tis true,
But not condemn'd to hear them, too-
(Our holy business being, 'tis known,
With the ears of their barley, not their own,)
Even they object to let us pillage,
By right divine, their tenth of tillage,
And, horror of horrors, even decline
To find us in sacramental wine!*
It is o'er, it is o'er, my reign is o'er,
Ah, never shall rosy Rector more,
Like the shepherds of Israel, idly eat,
And make of his flock "a prey and meat."†
* Among the specimens laid before Parliament of the sort of Church rates levied upon Catholics in Ireland, was a charge of two pipes of port for sacramental wine.
† Ezekiel, xxxiv. 10. -"Neither shall the shepherds feed themselves any more; for I will deliver my flock from their mouth, that they may not be meat for them."
No more shall be his the pastoral sport
Of suing his flock in the Bishop's Court,
Through various steps, Citation, Libel-
Scriptures all, but not the Bible;
Working the Law's whole apparatus,
To get at a few pre-doom'd potatoes,
And summoning all the powers of wig,
To settle the fraction of a pig!-
Till, parson and all committed deep
In the case of "Shepherds versus Sheep,"
The Law usurps the Gospel's place,
And, on Sundays, meeting face to face,
While Plaintiff fills the preacher's station,
Defendants form the congregation.
So lives he, Mammon's priest, not Heaven's,
For tenths thus all at sixes and sevens,
Seeking what parsons love no less
Than tragic poets—a good distress.
Instead of studying St. Augustin,
Gregory Nyss., or old St. Justin
(Books fit only to hoard dust in),
His reverence stints his evening readings
To learn'd Reports of Tithe Proceedings,
Sipping, the while, that port so ruddy,
Which forms his only ancient study ;-
Port so old, you'd swear its tartar
Was of the age of Justin Martyr,
And, had he sipp'd of such, no doubt
His martyrdom would have been-to gout.
Is all then lost?-alas, too true
Ye Tenths belov'd, adieu, adieu!
My reign is o'er, my reign is o'er-
Like old Thumb's ghost, "I can no more.".
|