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Epigram to a Rank Aristocrat

By Samuel Thomson

Dear Sir, when your spirit is summon’d away,

And your carcass consigned to the earth,
The particles of your pamperish’d clay,
To a crop of rank weeds may give birth.

Rich provender, faith, for a hungry pig,
Who may find them and so fall to work!
eat up ev’ry inch of ‘em, root, stem and sprig,
What then sir? – Good God! – you grow pork!

Methinks that I see you from chimney cut down,
And hissing with eggs in a pan,
Eat up by some red hot Republican clown,
And go to form parts of the MAN!

Thus, Sir, this great corpulent body you have,
Refined and constructed anew,
May yet from a haughty aristocrat knave,
Be made a good citizen True!!