ON READING IN A COMIC PAPER VERY ABSURD COMPARISONS
BETWEEN THE WAGES OF CURATES AND COLLIERS.

If colliers were curates, and curates were colliers,
I wonder what price the best coal would be then;
Whether meat would be dearer, or Heaven be nearer,
Or truth be less earnestly preached among men.

I know that the incomes of curates are slender;
But curates get luxuries colliers ne'er see,
Which they don't have to pay for, nor work night and day for,
In mines dark and slushy on back and bent knee.

Keep pulpits for curates--but pay them good stipends:
Keep mines for the colliers--but pay colliers well:
O, the Pit--no detraction--brings Pulpit reaction,
For pulpits would sicken if collieries fell.

Then go, sneering cynic--write nonsense and fiction
On champagne and velvet, on satin and sin;
Though the joke may be able, 'tis false as a fable,
And shows what a fog Fleet-street sometimes gets in.