Sibylline Leaves (Coleridge)/Parliamentary Oscillators
PARLIAMENTARY OSCILLATORS.
Almost awake? Why, what is this, and whence,
O ye right loyal men, all undefiled?
Sure, 'tis not possible that Common Sense
Has hitch'd her pullies to each heavy eye-lid?
Yet wherefore else that start, which discomposes
The drowsy waters lingering in your eye?
And are you really able to descry
That precipice three yards beyond your noses?
Yet flatter you I cannot, that your wit
Is much improved by this long loyal dosing;
And I admire, no more than Mr. Pitt,
Your jumps and starts of patriotic prosing—
Now cluttering to the Treasury Cluck, like chicken,
Now with small beaks the ravenous Bill opposing;
With serpent-tongue now stinging, and now licking,
Now semi-sibilant, now smoothly glozing—
Now having faith implicit that he can't err.
Hoping his hopes, alarm'd with his alarms;
And now believing him a sly inchanter,
Yet still afraid to break his brittle charms,
Lest some mad Devil suddenly unhamp'ring,
Slap-dash! the imp should fly off with the steeple,
On revolutionary broom-stick scampering.—
O ye soft-headed and soft-hearted people,
If you can stay so long from slumber free,
My muse shall make an effort to salute 'e:
For lo! a very dainty simile
Flash'd sudden through my brain, and 'twill just suit 'e!
You know that water-fowl that cries. Quack! quack!?
Full often have I seen a waggish crew
Fasten the Bird of Wisdom on it's back,
The ivy-haunting bird, that cries, Tu-whoo!
Both plunged together in the deep mill-stream,
(Mill-stream, or farm-yard pond, or mountain-lake,)
Shrill, as a Church and Constitution scream,
Tu-whoo! quoth Broad-face, and down dives the Drake!
The green-neck'd Drake once more pops up to view,
Stares round, cries Quack! and makes an angry pother;
Then shriller screams the bird with eye-lids blue,
The broad-faced bird! and deeper dives the other.
Ye quacking Statesmen! 'tis even so with you—
One peasecod is not liker to another.
Even so on Loyalty's Decoy-pond, each
Pops up his head, as fir'd with British blood,
Hears once again the Ministerial screech,
And once more seeks the bottom's blackest mud!
1794.