Classic Poem

Sleep, Mr Speaker! it's surely fair,
If you don't in your bed, that you should in your chair;
Longer and longer still they grow,
Tory and Radical, Aye and No;
Talking by night, and talking by day;
Sleep, Mr Speaker--sleep, sleep while you may!

Sleep, Mr Speaker! slumber lies
Light and brief on a Speaker's eyes;
Fielden or Finn, in a minute or two,
Some disorderly thing will do;
Riot will chase repose away:
Sleep, Mr Speaker--sleep, sleep while you may!

Sleep, Mr Speaker! Cobbett will soon
Move to abolish the sun and moon;
Hume, no doubt, will be taking the sense
Of the House on a saving of thirteen-pence;
Grattan will growl, or Baldwin bray:
Sleep, Mr Speaker--sleep, sleep while you may!

Sleep, Mr Speaker! dream of the time
When loyalty was not quite a crime;
When Grant was a pupil in Canning's school;
When Palmerston fancied Wood a fool:
Lord! how principles pass away!--
Sleep, Mr Speaker--sleep, sleep while you may!

Sleep, Mr Speaker! sweet to men
Is the sleep that comes but now and then;
Sweet to the sorrowful, sweet to the ill,
Sweet to the children that work in a mill;
You have more need of sleep than they:
Sleep, Mr Speaker--sleep, sleep while you may!