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The Seven Sages
| The First. My great-grandfather spoke to Edmund Burke | | In Grattans house. | | | | | | The Second. My great-
grandfather shared | | A pot-house bench with Oliver Goldsmith once. | | | | | | The Third. My great-grandfathers
father talked of music, | | Drank tar-water with the Bishop of Cloyne. | | | | | | The Fourth. But mine saw Stella once. | | | | | | The Fifth. Whence came our thought? | | | | | | The Sixth. From four great minds that hated Whiggery. | | | | | | The
Fifth. Burke was a Whig. | | | | | | The Sixth. Whether they knew or not, | | Goldsmith and Burke, Swift and the
Bishop of Cloyne | | All hated Whiggery; but what is Whiggery? | | A levelling, rancorous, rational sort of mind | | That
never looked out of the eye of a saint | | Or out of drunkards eye. | | | | | | The Seventh. Alls Whiggery now, | | But
we old men are massed against the world. | | | | | | The First. American colonies, Ireland, France and India | | Harried,
and Burkes great melody against it. | | | | | | The Second. Oliver Goldsmith sang what he had seen, | | Roads
full of beggars, cattle in the fields, | | But never saw the trefoil stained with blood, | | The avenging leaf
those fields raised up against it. | | | | | | The Fourth. The tomb of Swift wears it away. | | | | | | The Third. A voice | | Soft
as the rustle of a reed from Cloyne | | That gathers volume; now a thunder-clap. | | | | | | The Sixth. What schooling
had these four? | | | | | | The Seventh. They walked the roads | | Mimicking what they heard, as children mimic; | | They
understood that wisdom comes of beggary. |
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