Here we behold the sons of Bacchus set,
To drown their sorrows in tumultous joys,
Where each his past misfortune does forget -
Where calls for silence but increase the noise.
Fumes potent rise, and each succeeding draught
Proclaims the growing goodness of the beer;
And Hodge rears his stentorian voice aloft -
For he in reasoning owns no compeer.
In Politics with foresight keen he dips -
To show their course his spacious hand extends;
Fates fall from off the rustic Nestor's lips,
And empires hang upon his fingers' ends.
With well-clenched fist he makes the table plead;
Half-thunderstruck the gaping rustics stare;
They all admire the wisdom in his head -
But the great wonder is, how it came there.
I like such rhetoric - for to me it shows
More than a world of flowery tropes could teach -
That e'en the English peasant feels and knows
The glorious privileges of thought and speech.
Robert Gilchrist (1797-1844)
