And his Turk Excellency’s firman,

I write my name upon the book:

I write my name — and end my sermon.

* * *

O Vanity of vanities!

How wayward the decrees of Fate are;

How very weak the very wise,

How very small the very great are!

What mean these stale moralities,

Sir Preacher, from your desk you mumble?

Why rail against the great and wise,

And tire us with your ceaseless grumble?

Pray choose us out another text,

O man morose and narrow-minded!

Come turn the page-I read the next,

And then the next, and still I find it.

Read here how Wealth aside was thrust,

And Folly set in place exalted;

How Princes footed in the dust,

While lackeys in the saddle vaulted.

Though thrice a thousand years are past,

Since David’s son, the sad and splendid,

The weary King Ecclesiast,

Upon his awful tablets penned it, —

Methinks the text is never stale,

And life is every day renewing

Fresh comments on the old old tale

Of Folly, Fortune, Glory, Ruin.

Hark to the Preacher, preaching still

He lifts his voice and cries his sermon,

Here at St. Peter’s of Cornhill,

As yonder on the Mount of Hermon;

For you and me to heart to take

(O dear beloved brother readers)

To-day as when the good King spake

Beneath the solemn Syrian cedars.

The Rose of Flora

On Brady’s tower there grows a flower,

It is the loveliest flower that blows,—

At Castle Brady there lives a lady,

(And how I love her no one knows);

Her name is Nora, and the goddess Flora

Presents her with this blooming rose.

“O Lady Nora”, says the goddess Flora,

“I’ve many a rich and bright parterre;

In Brady’s towers there’s seven more flowers,

But you’re the fairest lady there:

Not all the county, nor Ireland’s bounty,

Can projuice a treasure that’s half so fair!”

What cheek is redder? sure roses fed her!

Her hair is maregolds, and her eye of blew.

Beneath her eyelid, is like the vi’let,

That darkly glistens with gentle jew!

The lily’s nature is not surely whiter

Than Nora’s neck is, — and her arrums too.

“Come, gentle Nora”, says the goddess Flora,

My dearest creature, take my advice,

There is a poet, full well you know it,

Who spends his lifetime in heavy sighs, —

Young Redmond Barry, ‘tis him you’ll marry,

If rhyme and raisin you’d choose likewise”.

Sorrows of Werther

Werther had a love for Charlotte

Such as words could never utter;

Would you know how first he met her?

She was cutting bread and butter.

Charlotte was a married lady,

And a moral man was Werther,

And, for all the wealth of Indies,

Would do nothing for to hurt her.

So he sighed and pined and ogled,

And his passion boiled and bubbled,

Till he blew his silly brains out,

And no more was by it troubled.

Charlotte, having seen his body

Borne before her on a shutter,

Like a well-conducted person,

Went on cutting bread and butter.

Friar’s Song

Some love the matin-chimes, which tell

The hour of prayer to sinner:

But better far’s the mid-day bell,

Which speaks the hour of dinner;

For when I see a smoking fish,

Or capon drown’d in gravy,

Or noble haunch on silver dish,

Full glad I sing my ave.

My pulpit is an alehouse bench,

Whereon I sit so jolly;

A smiling rosy country wench

My saint and patron holy.

I kiss her cheek so red and sleek,

I press her ringlets wavy,

And in her willing ear I speak

A most religious ave.

And if I’m blind, yet heaven is kind,

And holy saints forgiving;