TO JOHN BULL—ON HIS CHRISTMAS

IT’S little I care for a holiday,
And less for a lord or peer,
But I have a simple word to say
In a workman’s rough, untutored way,
On the opening of the year.

I know the poets will clink their rhymes,
As they always have done before,
And ring the changes of Christmas chimes,
On beef, and pudding, and good old times,
As they did in the days of yore.

But thousands of paupers will shrink and pine,
As they list to the Christmas song,
And sneer at your charities thin and fine,
Drawn and leveled by rule and line,
As they hunger, and wait, and long.

For your Christmas mirth is a make-believe
That covers a cancerous sore.
And you know that millions must fast and grieve,
That mothers and children must starve or thieve;
But you choose to gloze it o’er.

Then sing your carol and play your play,
For why should you pity or feel?
If a starving wretch should call to-day,
Bribe his misery out of your way—
Give him for once a meal.

Only for once—and the workhouse then:
Tis the best the fellow can do.
He’s but a thriftless pauper; and when
He has lost all caste with his fellow men
Pray why should he bother you?

Respectable John, with your shaven face,
Are you up to their priestly tricks?
You’d break your legs to speak with “his Grace”
Have you ever revolved a nation’s case,
Whose paupers are one in six?

A Bishop with seventy thousand pounds,
Filched each year from the workman’s pay.—
Do you wonder, when on your treadmill rounds
With the fools who shout for miters and crowns,
If there isn’t a better way?