Comic Tales and Lyrical Fancies including The Chessiad, a Mock-Heroic, in Five Cantos; and The Wreath of Love, in Four Cantos. By C. Dibdin, the Younger |
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THE PRACTICAL BULL.
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 | Comic Tales and Lyrical Fancies |  |
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THE PRACTICAL BULL.
A FACT.
Monopoly all men unite to decry,Though practice will often profession belie.
All should share in life's blessings, nor one stingy elf
Be allow'd to engross the good things to himself:
What is mine may be yours if occasion there be,
And you profit without a privation to me;
An umbrella in rain for an instance will do;
Though invested in one, 'twill accommodate two.
But let us, while moved by this recommendation,
The fitness regard of appropriation;
Nor lend four feet six, if uncloak'd he should be,
The great coat of a man rising full six feet three;
Or, if on a door-plate your name you'd have shown,
Don't borrow your neighbour's to pass for your own.
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And his messmates resolved, since so close to the land,
“Earth to earth,” like a christian, his corpse should be given,
Nor, sew'd up, down the throat of a shark should be driven.
They row'd him on shore, by two boats'-crews attended,
As good Irish hearts as ere messmate befriended.
They landed: for priest, at their head was Mich. Rooney;
And gravely they brought to his grave poor Pat Mooney.
The pray'rs read as well as Mich.'s learning permitted,
The body of Pat to the ground was committed;
They fill'd up the grave, and a turf o'er it spread,
But thought that some token should stand at its head:
“A grave-stone,” Mich. said, “was a capital idee,
With an epithalamium.” (Epitaph, vide).
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And a trifling occurrence forbad it, to boot;
For a stone had they found, they'd nor genius, nor tools,
Nor time, to engrave it; so, looking like fools,
And scratching their heads, disappointed and glum,
On board they resolved to drown sorrow in rum;
When a lucky invention struck one of the crew:
“I've hit it, my honies,” cried Teddy; “'twill do:”—
By the by, let me tell you, some ten years before,
An old bo'son, named North, was interr'd on this shore;
O'er whose grave a rude stone said,
“Here lies Bo'son North;
Who was born, so and so; and who died, and so forth.”
Teddy thought of the bo'son, and thence took his tone,
“There's old bo'son North on himself has a stone;
He has been so long dead that what's left of him's not him,
And no soul that remembers him now but's forgot him:
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And why should he have all the stone to himself?
For sailors together should share smooth and rough,
And the bo'son his spell of it's had long enough;
So let's borrow the loan of the stone for our mate,
And the epithalamium's cut ready, all nate.”
“By the powers, 'tis the thing!” cried, in rapture, Mich. Rooney:
So, “Here lies bo'son North,” was placed over Pat Mooney.
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