POLITICAL SQUIBS.

Dismount from our Parnassian pony,
And dive to deeds of little 'tony ;*
The wiles of mobocrats make known,
Which Beelzebub would blush to own!

At Bennington,† a set of fellows,
Of Tony made a pair of bellows,
Then plied their tool, with skill amazing,
To set Sedition's coals a blazing,

And hope, by dint of perseverance,
To make all smoke within a year

Supported by a crooked set, This reptile prints a dull gazette, And true it is, a viler thing

Ne'er caus'd its Editor to swing ;

hence!

Each paper, take them as they rise,

Will average at a hundred lies,

Anthony Haswell. For further particulars respecting

this peerless personage, see page 14.

+ A village in Vermont.

POLITICAL SQUIBS.

Which he, and other knaves invent,
Against the Federal Government!

E'en Virgil's Fame, with all her tongues, And many a hundred pair of lungs,

And who, with ease, as poets say,

Can forge a million lies a day,

Now breaks her brazen trump, and sighing,

To Tony yields the palm of lying!

But, quoth the reader, "tell me why, "You thus would cannonade a fly?

"Would not a warrior simple be,

"To fight a duel with a flea?

"Would old Vespasian e'er invest,
"With battering rams a weasel's nest ?"
We own our error, gentle reader,

And stand rebuk'd for our procedure:
Then Tony, thou may'st creep along
Unnotic❜d in our future song,

POLITICAL SQUIBS.

From Satire's arrows still exempt,
Until thou risest to contempt !

Then let us pass to what was done

By mob conven'd at Castleton.
"Twas on the fourth of last July,
A gang of Democrats got high,

And old and young, and man and maid,
March'd round the town in grand parade,

Procession organiz'd, as some say,

By most redoubted Major Rumsey;
One Witherell an Oration spoke,

He'd learn'd from Webster's spelling-book:

An Ode, as flat as water-gruel

Was hammer'd out by Major Buel.

Full many buxom nymphs I ween,*

Add vast ecclat to this grand scene,

*This was precisely alamode de François Every one knows the gentle part, which the fair sex took in the French revolution.

POLITICAL SQUIBS.

Amid the mob assume their places,

While rapture kindles in their faces;

A swivel loud each toast announces;

Each scrapes, huzzas, and kicks and bounces, Waves high her go-to-meeting cap,

And gives the Vermont beast *-a clap!

Our prospect opes to nobler views,,

And, with your leave, my rambling Muse,
I'll venture on a wider range

To notice what is new and strange.

This happy land for song presents

But few remarkable events,

Of course we've little to relate,
Unless our news we fabricate,
Or like some typographs' take pains
To hunt for plagues, and hurricanes !
Here Social-Bliss erects her bowers,

Here Plenty falls in golden showers.

*To wit, the Lyon we have before celebrated.

POLITICAL SQUIBS.

"Tis true, with sorrow have we seen The Yellow-Fiend,* and Tom M'Kean,+

By Providence let loose of late

To punish Pensylvania State.

And often have we view'd, affrighted,

The ruffian Irishmen-United!

But as to these, our hope and trust is,

The hangman soon will do them justice.

With whiskey-insurrection fellows,

辈

They'll wave sin-offerings on the gallows;

The fate of every rogue who plays

The second part of Captain Shays. ‡

Again we mount poetic nag on,
Or hire a seat in Neptune's waggon,
Or any other mode you please,
To take a trip beyond the seas.

*Yellow-fever.

+ A noted Democrat.

+ See page 134.