Page:Two Mock Epics (Hanuman and Tantum Religio), Lyrics, Post Meridian Verse, The Turret Captain's Toast and other Verses.pdf/115

 A rapid gathering of the fathers

Conscripti, to discourse of prices

And victualling, perhaps sans scrip-ti rather’s

The fitter term for whom devices

For floating loans and filling larders,

Adjusting deities’ and digestions’

Claims and the like are now the questions

Sans scrip or scrap to pay the bakers’

And butchers’ monthly tendered bills;

Th’ apothecary medicine-makers’

If e’er his Holiness took pills;

Those heavier ones to undertakers

When Cardinals, from this world’s ills,

And debts unpaid, in hats and pink hose,

Float up to heaven’s gate like flamingoes.

Some would accept the project Pat Egan,

The New York stock jobber, suggested:—

To form a company: “The Vatican

And Pope Co., Limited.” If blessed, it

Should tap the faithful. “I’ll do what I can,’

He cried, “and when their gold’s invested,

Make me sole Trustee and I’ll chance it,

For Church and faith’s sake and finance it.”

Some who were disinclined to swallow

The baits of dividends and bonuses

Would purge the Petrine ark, now hollow,

By throwing overboard the Jonases.

Their personal foes, and some the Apollo

Would sacrifice to these new onuses,

And smuggle into France the Parian

Chef-d’œuvre world-famed as Belviderian.