Of such a character no single trace
Exists, I know, in my fictitious face;
There wants a certain cast about the eye;
A certain lifting of the nose’s tip;
A certain curling of the nether lip,
In scorn of all that is, beneath the sky;
In brief it is an aspect deleterious,
A face decidedly not serious,
A face profane, that would not do at all
To make a face at Exeter Hall,—­
That Hall where bigots rant, and cant, and pray,
And laud each other face to face,
Till ev’ry farthing-candle ray
Conceives itself a great gas-light of grace.

Well!—­be the graceless lineaments confest! 
I do enjoy this bounteous beauteous earth;
    And dote upon a jest
“Within the limits of becoming mirth";—­
No solemn sanctimonious face I pull,
Nor think I’m pious when I’m only bilious—­
Nor study in my sanctum supercilious
To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull. 
I pray for grace—­repent each sinful act—­
Peruse, but underneath the rose, my Bible;
And love my neighbor far too well, in fact,
To call and twit him with a godly tract
That’s turn’d by application to a libel. 
My heart ferments not with the bigot’s leaven,
All creeds I view with toleration thorough,
And have a horror of regarding heaven
    As anybody’s rotten borough.

What else? no part I take in party fray,
With troops from Billingsgate’s slang-whanging tartars,
I fear no Pope—­and let great Ernest play
At Fox and Goose with Foxs’ Martyrs! 
I own I laugh at over-righteous men,
I own I shake my sides at ranters,
And treat sham-Abr’am saints with wicked banters,
I even own, that there are times—­but then
It’s when I’ve got my wine—­I say d——­canters!

I’ve no ambition to enact the spy
On fellow souls, a Spiritual Pry—­
’Tis said that people ought to guard their noses,
Who thrust them into matters none of theirs;
And tho’ no delicacy discomposes
Your Saint, yet I consider faith and pray’rs
Amongst the privatest of men’s affairs.

I do not hash the Gospel in my books,
And thus upon the public mind intrude it,
As if I thought, like Otaheitan cooks,
No food was fit to eat till I had chewed it.

On Bible stilts I don’t affect to stalk;
Nor lard with Scripture my familiar talk,—­
     For man may pious texts repeat,
And yet religion have no inward seat;
’Tis not so plain as the old Hill of Howth,
A man has got his belly full of meat
Because he talks with victuals in his mouth!

Mere verbiage,—­it is not worth a carrot! 
Why, Socrates—­or Plato—­where’s the odds?—­
Once taught a jay to supplicate the Gods,
And made a Polly-theist of a Parrot!

A mere professor, spite of all his cant, is
    Not a whit better than a Mantis,—­
An insect, of what clime I can’t determine,
That lifts its paws most parson-like, and thence,
By simple savages—­thro’ sheer pretence—­
Is reckon’d quite a saint amongst the vermin. 
But where’s the reverence, or where the nous,
To ride on one’s religion thro’ the lobby,
    Whether a stalking-horse or hobby,
To show its pious paces to “the house”?