To a SPIDER.

Spider! thou need'st not run in fear about
To shun my curious eyes;

I won't humanely crush thy bowels out
Lest thou should'st eat the flies

;

Nor will I roast thee with a damn'd delight
Thy strange instinctive fortitude to see,
For there is one who might

One day roast me.

Thou art welcome to a Rhymer sore-perplext,

The subject of his verse:

There's many a one who on a better text
Perhaps might comment worse.

Then shrink not, old Free-Mason, from my view,

But quietly like me spin out the line;

Do thou thy work pursue

As I will mine.

Weaver of snares, thou emblemest the ways
Of Satan, Sire of lies;

Hell's huge black Spider for mankind he lays
His toils as thou for flies.

When Betty's busy eye runs round the room
Woe to that nice geometry, if seen!
But where is he whose broom

The earth shall clean?

Spider! of old thy flimsy webs were thought,
And 'twas a likeness true,

To emblem laws in which the weak are caught
But which the strong break through.

And if a victim in thy toils is ta’en,

Like some poor client is that wretched fly;
I'll warrant thee thou'lt drain

His life-blood dry.

And is not thy weak work like human schemes
And care on earth employ'd?

Such are young hopes and Love's delightful dreams
So easily destroyed!

So does the Statesman, whilst the Avengers sleep, Self-deem'd secure, his wiles in secret lay,

Soon shall Destruction sweep

"His work away.

Thou busy labourer! one resemblance more
Shall yet the verse prolong,

For Spider, thou art like the Poet poor,
Whom thou hast help d in song.

Both busily our needful food to win,

We work, as Nature taught, with ceaseless pains,

Thy bowels thou dost spin,

I spin my brains.

The OAK of our FATHERS.

Alas for the Oak of our Fathers that stood

In its beauty; the glory and pride of the wood!

It
grew
and it flourish'd for many an age,
And many a tempest wreak'd on it its rage,

But when its strong branches were bent with the blast,
It struck its roots deeper, and flourish'd more fast.

Its head tower'd high, and its branches spread round,
For its roots were struck deep, and its heart was sound;
The bees o'er its honey-dew'd foliage play'd,
And the beasts of the forest fed under its shade.

The Oak of our Fathers to Freedom was dear,
Its leaves were her crown, and its wood was her spear.
Alas for the Oak of our Fathers that stood

In its beauty, the glory and pride of the wood!

There crept up an ivy and clung round the trunk,
It struck in its mouths and its juices it drunk ;
The branches grew sickly deprived of their food,
And the Oak was no longer the pride of the wood.

The foresters saw and they gather'd around,

Its roots still were fast, and its heart still was sound;
They lopt off the boughs that so beautiful spread,
But the ivy they spared on its vitals that fed.

No longer the bees o'er its honey-dews play'd,
Nor the beasts of the forest fed under its shade;
Lopt and mangled the trunk in its ruin is seen,
A monument now what its beauty has been.

The Oak has received its incurable wound,

They have loosened the roots, tho' the heart may be sound;
What the travellers at distance green-flourishing see,
Are the leaves of the ivy that poisoned the tree.

Alas for the Oak of our Fathers that stood

In its beauty, the glory and pride of the wood!