g-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,