To the Advocates for the Removal of Smithfield Market

O philanthropic men!--For this address I need not make apology--Who aim at clearing out the Smithfield pen,And planting further off its vile Zoology--Permit me thus to tell,I like your efforts well,For routing that great nest of Hornithology!

Be not dismay’d although repulsed at first,And driven from their Horse, and Pig, and Lamb parts,Charge on!--you shall upon their hornworks burst,And carry all their Bull-warks and their Ram-parts.

Go on, ye wholesale drovers!And drive away the Smithfield flocks and herds!As wild as Tartar-Curds,That come so fat, and kicking, from their clovers,Off with them all!--those restive brutes, that vexOur streets, and plunge, and lunge, and butt, and battle;And save the female sexFrom being cow’d--like Iö--by the cattle!

Fancy,--when droves appear onThe hill of Holborn, roaring from its top,--Your ladies--ready, as they own, to drop,Taking themselves to Thomson’s with a Fear-on!

Or, in St. Martin’s Lane,Scared by a Bullock, in a frisky vein,--Fancy the terror of your timid daughtersWhile rushing souseInto a coffee-house,To find it--Slaughter’s.

Or fancy this:--Walking along the street, some stranger Miss,Her head with no such thought of danger laden,When suddenly ’tis “Aries Taurus Virgo!”You don’t know Latin, I translate it ergo,Into your Areas a Bull throws the Maiden!Think of some poor old croneTreated, just like a penny, with a toss!At that vile spot now grownSo generally knownFor making a Cow Cross!

Nay, fancy your own selves far off from stall,Or shed, or shop--and that an Ox infuriateJust pins you to the wall,Giving you a strong dose of Oxy-Muriate!

Methinks I hear the neighbours that live roundThe Market-groundThus make appeal unto their civic fellows--“’Tis well for you that live apart--unableTo hear this brutal Babel,But our firesides are troubled with their bellows.

“Folks that too freely supMust e’en put upWith their own troubles if they can’t digest;But we must needs regardThe case as hardThe others’ victuals should disturb our rest,That from our sleep your food should start and jump us!We like, ourselves, a steak,We don’t want oxen at our doors to rump-us!

“If we do doze--it really is too bad!We constantly are roar’d awake or rung,Through bullocks madThat run in all the ‘Night Thoughts’ of our Young!”

Such are the woes of sleepers--now let’s takeThe woes of those that wish to keep a Wake.Oh think! when Wombell gives his annual feasts,Think of these “Bulls of Basan,” far from mild ones;Such fierce tame beasts,That nobody much cares to see the Wild ones!

Think of the Show woman, “what shows a Dwarf,”Seeing a red Cow comeTo swallow her Tom Thumb,And forc’d with broom of birch to keep her off!

Think, too, of Messrs. Richardson and Co.,When looking at their public private boxes,To see in the back rowThree live sheep’s heads, a porker’s and an Ox’s!Think of their Orchestra, when two horns comeThrough, to accompany the double drum!

Or, in the midst of murder and remorses,Just when the Ghost is certain,A great rent in the curtain,And enter two tall skeletons--of Horses!

Great philanthropics! pray urge these topics!Upon the solemn Councils of the Nation,Get a Bill soon, and give, some noon,The Bulls, a Bull of Excommunication!

Let the old Fair have fair-play as its right,And to each show and sightYe shall be treated with a Free List latitude;To Richardson’s Stage Dramas,Dio--and Cosmo--ramas,Giants and Indians wild,Dwarf, Sea Bear, and Fat Child,And that most rare of Shows--a Show of gratitude!