FullReads

Stanzas from the Banks of the Shannon.[1]

1828.

“Take back the virgin page.”
MOORE’S Irish Melodies.

No longer dear Vesey, feel hurt and uneasy
At hearing it said by the Treasury brother,
That thou art a sheet of blank paper, my Vesey,
And he, the dear, innocent placeman, another.[2]

For lo! what a service we Irish have done thee;–
Thou now art a sheet of blank paper no more;
By St. Patrick, we’ve scrawled such a lesson upon thee
As never was scrawled upon foolscap before.

Come–on with your spectacles, noble Lord Duke,
(Or O’Connell has green ones he haply would lend you,)
Read Vesey all o’er (as you can’t read a book)
And improve by the lesson we bog-trotters send you;

A lesson, in large Roman characters traced,
Whose awful impressions from you and your kin
Of blank-sheeted statesmen will ne’er be effaced–
Unless, ‘stead of paper, you’re mere asses’ skin.

Shall I help you to construe it? ay, by the Gods,
Could I risk a translation, you should have a rare one;
But pen against sabre is desperate odds,
And you, my Lord Duke (as you hinted once), wear one.

Again and again I say, read Vesey o’er;–
You will find him worth all the old scrolls of papyrus
That Egypt e’er filled with nonsensical lore,
Or the learned Champollion e’er wrote of, to tire us.

All blank as he was, we’ve returned him on hand,
Scribbled o’er with a warning to Princes and Dukes,
Whose plain, simple drift if they won’t understand,
Tho’ carest at St. James’s, they’re fit for St. Luke’s.

Talk of leaves of the Sibyls!–more meaning conveyed is
In one single leaf such as now we have spelled on,
Than e’er hath been uttered by all the old ladies
That ever yet spoke, from the Sibyls to Eldon.

NOTES:
[1] These verses were suggested by the result of the Clare election, in the year 1828, when the Right Honorable W. Vesey Fitzgerald was rejected, and Mr. O’Connell returned.

[2] Some expressions to this purport, in a published letter of one of these gentlemen, had then produced a good deal of amusement.