Thoughts on Tar Barrels
(Vide Description of a Late Fête.)
1832.
What a pleasing contrivance! how aptly devised
’Twixt tar and magnolias to puzzle one’s noses!
And how the tar-barrels must all be surprised
To find themselves seated like “Love among roses!”
What a pity we can’t, by precautions like these,
Clear the air of that other still viler infection;
That radical pest, that old whiggish disease,
Of which cases, true-blue, are in every direction.
Stead of barrels, let’s light up an Auto da Fe
Of a few good combustible Lords of “the Club;”
They would fume in a trice, the Whig cholera away,
And there’s Bucky would burn like a barrel of bub.
How Roden would blaze! and what rubbish throw out!
A volcano of nonsense in active display;
While Vane, as a butt, amidst laughter, would spout
The hot nothings he’s full of, all night and all day.
And then, for a finish, there’s Cumberland’s Duke,—
Good Lord, how his chin-tuft would crackle in air!
Unless (as is shrewdly surmised from his look)
He’s already bespoke for combustion elsewhere.
[1] The Marquis of Hertford’s Fête.—From dread of cholera his Lordship had ordered tar-barrels to be burned in every direction.