Ephemeron :: :: University of Virginia Library

Brownell, Henry Howard (1820-1872)

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And for thee, our Ancient Mother!
By the Spectre of the Past
Long estranged from one another—
We were drawing near at last.

Not an honest ear but hearkened
Coldly to report malign—
Owning our escutcheon darkened
With a stain as deep as thine.

Not a generous heart but tasted
Kindred grief—and made its moan
O'er the splendid Valor wasted,
And the blood so near our own.

But the bond can close no further,
Till thy mien we may forget,
Hand and glove with prosperous Murther—
Courting fouler co-mates yet.

Years to come—of shame or glory—
All this bloody harvest reaped—
Never tell your sons the story,
How the heart of England leaped,

Leaped in wretched exultation
O'er a pale majestic Foe,
'Mid an Empire's lamentation,
By the Viewless Hand laid low.

While he rules, the Man of Violence
Brave with free unbated breath;
But ye might have paused in silence
At the Majesty of Death.

No respectable American, I am sure, but witnessed with sincere pleasure the final union, after an almost suicidal delay, of the two most civilized nations of Europe. But this pleasure was speedily dampened by the covert insinuation of the French government, and the insolent announcement of the English press, that the affairs of this hemisphere were thenceforth to be regulated by their joint interference.

To dance on the grave of an adversary has ever been accounted a pitiful piece of satisfaction—yet something very like this has Britannia been doing, if the press and the theatre are fair exponents of public feeling. Her demonstrations have been a little too much in the humor of Moliere's police, enraged at the mischievous Polichinelle and his pretended arsenal of weapons—

—“coquin, filou, voleur!
Vous osez nous faire peur!”
“The villain! who has dared to alarm us!” (they proceed to beat him.)

Saddest of all is it to see our old friend, Mr. Punch, whom we have always used to regard as a very saint, to venerate as the chiefest pillar in the whole fabric of British liberty, to defer to, in short, as the Fifth Estate of England—to see him, at his time of life, taking office under a government in exposing which nearly the whole of it has been spent—caricaturing (literally) the Corpse of that tremendous Enemy whom England, so little time ago, welcomed as her staunchest friend—and abasing himself, in complimentary verse, before the man whose person and whose deeds he has so perseveringly pilloried and pelted, and whose nose was the only ill feature in the case, which he could by any possibility exaggerate. A constitution torn in tatters, like a writ by a stout criminal—a couple of thousand blouses, scattered about the Boulevards, and dyed in the old approved mixture of blood and “boue de Paris”— are coolly disposed of in the precious couplet,

“For oaths—what King e'er kept them, when Policy said ‘break!’
If precedents can justify, defence is soon to make.”

Perhaps it is—but you, Master Punch, are not exactly the man to make it—certainly not, until you can do it in better rhyme and more coherent reason. 'Tis a dog's trick you have played us, and shall long be remembered of you. After this, who can be blamed for renouncing all faith in virtue? Of the rest, it might have been expected, but—tu Punche! It was the drop too much—the drop of thee, oh Punch, with thy spirits and thine acid omitted (like Hamlet) by particular request—nothing but sugar allowed—and best sugar at that—mere eau sucrec of a Punch that thou art! Nominis Umbra! Ghost of a Punch! leave patting this live dog, and kicking that dead lion, and be our own dear, good, brave, honest, witty, magnanimous Punch again!