How the Bishop of Norwich had barter’d
    His faith for a legate’s commission;
  How Lyndhurst, afraid to be martyr’d,
    Had stooped to a base coalition;
  How Papists are cased from compassion
    By bigotry, stronger than steel;
  How burning would soon come in fashion,
    And how very bad it must feel.

  We were all so much touched and excited
    By a subject so direly sublime,
  That the rules of politeness were slighted,
    And we all of us talked at a time;
  And in tones, which each moment grew louder,
    Told how we should dress for the show,
  And where we should fasten the powder,
    And if we should bellow or no.

  Thus from subject to subject we ran,
    And the journey pass’d pleasantly o’er,
  Till at last Dr. Humdrum began: 
    From that time I remember no more. 
  At Ware he commenced his prelection,
    In the dullest of clerical drones: 
  And when next I regained recollection
    We were rumbling o’er Trumpington stones.

WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED.

(1802-1839.)

LXIII.  THE RED FISHERMAN; OR, THE DEVIL’S DECOY.

    Published in Knight’s Annual.

  The Abbot arose, and closed his book,
    And donned his sandal shoon,
  And wandered forth alone, to look
    Upon the summer moon: 
  A starlight sky was o’er his head,
    A quiet breeze around;
  And the flowers a thrilling fragrance shed
    And the waves a soothing sound: 
  It was not an hour, nor a scene, for aught
    But love and calm delight;
  Yet the holy man had a cloud of thought
    On his wrinkled brow that night. 
  He gazed on the river that gurgled by,
    But he thought not of the reeds
  He clasped his gilded rosary,
    But he did not tell the beads;
  If he looked to the heaven, ’twas not to invoke
    The Spirit that dwelleth there;
  If he opened his lips, the words they spoke
    Had never the tone of prayer. 
  A pious priest might the Abbot seem,
    He had swayed the crozier well;
  But what was the theme of the Abbot’s dream,
    The Abbot were loth to tell.

  Companionless, for a mile or more,
  He traced the windings of the shore. 
  Oh beauteous is that river still,
  As it winds by many a sloping hill,
  And many a dim o’erarching grove,
  And many a flat and sunny cove,
  And terraced lawns, whose bright arcades
  The honeysuckle sweetly shades,
  And rocks, whose very crags seem bowers,
  So gay they are with grass and flowers! 
  But the Abbot was thinking of scenery
    About as much, in sooth,
  As a lover thinks of constancy,
    Or an advocate of truth. 
  He did not mark how the skies in wrath
    Grew dark above his head;
  He did not mark how the mossy path