The works of Thomas Hood :: :: University of Virginia Library

The works of Thomas Hood

Comic and serious: In prose and verse. Edited, with notes, by his son

Hood, Thomas (1799-1845)

II.

III.

IV.

VI.

VOLUME VI.

VII.

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VI. VOLUME VI.

1842.

[Continued.]

SPRING.

A NEW VERSION.

“ Ham.
The air bites shrewdly—it is very cold.

Hor.
It is a nipping and an eager air.”

—Hamlet.

“Come, gentle Spring! ethereal mildness come!”
Oh! Thomson, void of rhyme as well as reason,
How couldst thou thus poor human nature hum?
There's no such season.

The Spring! I shrink and shudder at her name!
For why, I find her breath a bitter blighter!
And suffer from her blows as if they came
From Spring the Fighter.

Her praises, then, let hardy poets sing,
And be her tuneful laureates and upholders,
Who do not feel as if they had a Spring
Pour'd down their shoulders!

Let others eulogise her floral shows,
From me they cannot win a single stanza,
I know her blooms are in full blow—and so's
The Influenza.

Her cowslips, stocks, and lilies of the vale,
Her honey-blossoms that you hear the bees at,
Her pansies, daffodils, and primrose pale,
Are things I sneeze at!

Fair is the vernal quarter of the year!
And fair its early buddings and its blowings—
But just suppose Consumption's seeds appear
With other sowings!

For me, I find, when eastern winds are high,
A frigid, not a genial inspiration;
Nor can, like Iron-Chested Chubb, defy
An inflammation.

Smitten by breezes from the land of plague,
To me all vernal luxuries are fables,
Oh! where's the Spring in a rheumatic leg,
Stiff as a table's?

I limp in agony,—I wheeze and cough;
And quake with Ague, that Great Agitator;
Nor dream, before July, of leaving off
My Respirator.

What wonder if in May itself I lack
A peg for laudatory verse to hang on?—
Spring mild and gentle!—yes, as Spring-heeled Jack
To those he sprang on.

In short, whatever panegyrics lie
In fulsome odes too many to be cited,
The tenderness of Spring is all my eye,
And that is blighted!

THE TURTLES.

A FABLE.

“The rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle.” —Byron.

One day, it was before a civic dinner,
Two London Aldermen, no matter which,
Cordwainer, Girdler, Patten-maker, Skinner—
But both were florid, corpulent, and rich,
And both right fond of festive demolition,
Set forth upon a secret expedition.
Yet not, as might be fancied from the token,
To Pudding Lane, Pie Corner, or the Street
Of Bread, or Grub, or anything to eat,
Or drink, as Milk, or Vintry, or Portsoken,
But eastward to that more aquatic quarter,
Where folks take water,
Or bound on voyages, secure a berth
For Antwerp or Ostend, Dundee or Perth,
Calais, Boulogne, or any Port on earth!

Jostled and jostling, through the mud,
Peculiar to the Town of Lud,
Down narrow streets and crooked lanes they dived,
Past many a gusty avenue, through which
Came yellow fog, and smell of pitch,
From barge, and boat, and dusky wharf derived;
With darker fumes, brought eddying by the draught,
From loco-smoko-motive craft;
Mingling with scents of butter, cheese, and gammons,
Tea, coffee, sugar, pickles, rosin, wax,
Hides, tallow, Russia-matting, hemp and flax,
Salt-cod, red herrings, sprats, and kipper'd salmons,
Nuts, oranges, and lemons,
Each pungent spice, and aromatic gum,
Gas, pepper, soaplees, brandy, gin, and rum;
Alamode-beef and greens—the London soil—
Glue, coal, tobacco, turpentine, and oil,
Bark, assafœtida, squills, vitriol, hops,
In short, all whiffs, and sniffs, and puffs, and snuffs,
From metals, minerals, and dyewood stuffs,
Fruits, victual, drink, solidities, or slops—
In flasks, casks, bales, trucks, waggons, taverns, shops,
Boats, lighters, cellars, wharfs, and warehouse-tops,
That, as we walk upon the river's ridge,
Assault the nose—below the bridge.

A walk, however, as tradition tells,
That once a poor blind Tobit used to choose,
Because, incapable of other views,
He met with “such a sight of smells.”

But on, and on, and on,
In spite of all unsavoury shocks,

Progress the stout Sir Peter and Sir John,
Steadily steering ship-like for the docks—
And now they reach a place the Muse, unwilling,
Recalls for female slang and vulgar doing,
The famous Gate of Billing
That does not lead to cooing—
And now they pass that House that is so ugly
A Customer to people looking “smuggley”—
And now along that fatal Hill they pass
Where centuries ago an Oxford bled,
And proved—too late to save his life, alas!—
That he was “off his head.”

At last before a lofty brick-built pile
Sir Peter stopp'd, and with mysterious smile
Tingled a bell that served to bring
The wire-drawn genius of the ring,
A species of commercial Samuel Weller—
To whom Sir Peter—tipping him a wink,
And something else to drink—
“Show us the cellar.”

Obsequious bow'd the man, and led the way
Down sundry flights of stairs, where windows small,
Dappled with mud, let in a dingy ray—
A dirty tax, if they were tax'd at all.

At length they came into a cellar damp,
With venerable cobwebs fringed around,
A cellar of that stamp
Which often harbours vintages renown'd,
The feudal Hock, or Burgundy the courtly.

With sherry, brown or golden,
Or port, so olden,
Bereft of body 'tis no longer portly—
But old or otherwise—to be veracious—
That cobwebb'd cellar, damp, and dim, and spacious,
Held nothing crusty—but crustaceous.

Prone, on the chilly floor,
Five splendid Turtles—such a five!
Natives of some West Indian shore,
Were flapping all alive,
Late landed from the Jolly Planter's yawl—
A sight whereon the dignitaries fix'd
Their eager eyes, with ecstacy unmix'd,
Like fathers that behold their infants crawl,
Enjoying every little kick and sprawl.
Nay—far from fatherly the thoughts they bred,
Poor loggerheads from far Ascension ferried!
The Aldermen too plainly wish'd them dead
And Aldermanbury'd!

“There!” cried Sir Peter, with an air
Triumphant as an ancient victor's,
And pointing to the creatures rich and rare,
“There's picters!”

“Talk of Olympic Games! They're not worth mention;
The real prize for wrestling is when Jack,
In Providence or Ascension,
Can throw a lively turtle on its back!”

“Aye!” cried Sir John, and with a score of nods,
Thoughtful of classical symposium,

“There's food for Gods!
There's nectar! there's ambrosium!
There's food for Roman Emperors to eat—
Oh, there had been a treat
(Those ancient names will sometimes hobble us)
For Helio-gobble-us!”

“There were a feast for Alexander's Feast!
The real sort—none of your mock or spurious!”
And then he mention'd Aldermen deceased,
And “Epicurius,”
And how Tertullian had enjoy'd such foison;
And speculated on that verdigrease
That isn't poison.

“Talk of your Spring, and verdure, and all that
Give me green fat!
As for your Poets with their groves of myrtles
And billing turtles,
Give me, for poetry, them Turtles there,
A-billing in a bill of fare!”

“Of all the things I ever swallow—
Good, well-dressed turtle beats them hollow—
It almost makes me wish, I vow,
To have two stomachs, like a cow!”
And lo! as with the cud, an inward thrill
Upheaved his waistcoat and disturb'd his frill,
His mouth was oozing and he work'd his jaw—
“I almost think that I could eat one raw!”

And thus, as “inward love breeds outward talk,”
The portly pair continued to discourse;

And then—as Gray describes of life's divorce,—
With “longing lingering look” prepared to walk,—
Having thro' one delighted sense, at least,
Enjoy'd a sort of Barmecidal feast,
And with prophetic gestures, strange to see,
Forestall'd the civic Banquet yet to be,
Its callipash and callipee!

A pleasant prospect—but alack!
Scarcely each Alderman had turn'd his back,
When seizing on the moment so propitious,
And having learn'd that they were so delicious
To bite and sup,
From praises so high flown and injudicious,—
And nothing could be more pernicious!
The turtles fell to work, and ate each other up!

MORAL.

Never, from folly or urbanity,
Praise people thus profusely to their faces,
Till quite in love with their own graces,
They're eaten up by vanity!

THE ELM TREE.

A DREAM IN THE WOODS.

“And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees.”
—As You Like It.

I. [PART I.]

'Twas in a shady Avenue,
Where lofty Elms abound—
And from a Tree
There came to me
A sad and solemn sound,
That sometimes murmur'd overhead,
And sometimes underground.

Amongst the leaves it seem'd to sigh,
Amid the boughs to moan;
It mutter'd in the stem, and then
The roots took up the tone;
As if beneath the dewy grass
The dead began to groan.

No breeze there was to stir the leaves;
No bolts that tempests launch,
To rend the trunk or rugged bark;
No gale to bend the branch;
No quake of earth to heave the roots,
That stood so stiff and staunch.

No bird was preening up aloft,
To rustle with its wing;
No squirrel, in its sport or fear,

From bough to bough to spring;
The solid bole
Had ne'er a hole
To hide a living thing!

No scooping hollow cell to lodge
A furtive beast or fowl,
The martin, bat,
Or forest cat
That nightly loves to prowl,
Nor ivy nook so apt to shroud
The moping, snoring owl.

But still the sound was in my ear,
A sad and solemn sound,
That sometimes murmur'd overhead,
And sometimes underground—
'Twas in a shady Avenue
Where lofty Elms abound.

O hath the Dryad still a tongue
In this ungenial clime?
Have Sylvan Spirits still a voice
As in the classic prime—
To make the forest voluble,
As in the olden time?

The olden time is dead and gone;
Its years have fill'd their sum—
And e'en in Greece—her native Greece—
The Sylvan Nymph is dumb—
From ash, and beech, and aged oak,
No classic whispers come.

From Poplar, Pine, and drooping Birch,
And fragrant Linden Trees;
No living sound
E'er hovers round,
Unless the vagrant breeze,
The music of the merry bird,
Or hum of busy bees.

But busy bees forsake the Elm
That bears no bloom aloft—
The Finch was in the hawthorn-bush,
The Blackbird in the croft;
And among the firs the brooding Dove,
That else might murmur soft.

Yet still I heard that solemn sound,
And sad it was to boot,
From ev'ry overhanging bough,
And each minuter shoot;
From rugged trunk and mossy rind,
And from the twisted root.

From these,—a melancholy moan;
From those,—a dreary sigh;
As if the boughs were wintry bare,
And wild winds sweeping by—
Whereas the smallest fleecy cloud
Was stedfast in the sky.

No sign or touch of stirring air
Could either sense observe—
The zephyr had not breath enough

The thistle-down to swerve,
Or force the filmy gossamers
To take another curve.

In still and silent slumber hush'd
All Nature seem'd to be:
From heaven above, or earth beneath,
No whisper came to me—
Except the solemn sound and sad
From that Mysterious Tree!

A hollow, hollow, hollow sound,
As is that dreamy roar
When distant billows boil and bound
Along a shingly shore—
But the ocean brim was far aloof,
A hundred miles or more.

No murmur of the gusty sea,
No tumult of the beach,
However they may foam and fret,
The bounded sense could reach—
Methought the trees in mystic tongue
Were talking each to each!—

Mayhap, rehearsing ancient tales
Of greenwood love or guilt,
Of whisper'd vows
Beneath their boughs;
Or blood obscurely spilt;
Or of that near-hand Mansion House
A Royal Tudor built.

Perchance, of booty won or shared
Beneath the starry cope—
Or where the suicidal wretch
Hung up the fatal rope;
Or Beauty kept an evil tryste,
Insnared by Love and Hope.

Of graves, perchance, untimely scoop'd
At midnight dark and dank—
And what is underneath the sod
Whereon the grass is rank—
Of old intrigues,
And privy leagues,
Tradition leaves in blank.

Of traitor lips that mutter'd plots—
Of Kin who fought and fell—
God knows the undiscover'd schemes,
The arts and acts of Hell,
Perform'd long generations since,
If trees had tongues to tell!

With wary eyes, and ears alert,
As one who walks afraid,
I wander'd down the dappled path
Of mingled light and shade—
How sweetly gleam'd that arch of blue
Beyond the green arcade!

How cheerly shone the glimpse of Heav'n
Beyond that verdant aisle!
All overarch'd with lofty elms,
That quench'd the light, the while,

As dim and chill
As serves to fill
Some old Cathedral pile!

And many a gnarlèd trunk was there,
That ages long had stood,
Till Time had wrought them into shapes
Like Pan's fantastic brood;
Or still more foul and hideous forms
That Pagans carve in wood!

A crouching Satyr lurking here—
And there a Goblin grim—
As staring full of demon life
As Gothic sculptor's whim—
A marvel it had scarcely been
To hear a voice from him!

Some whisper from that horrid mouth
Of strange, unearthly tone;
Or wild infernal laugh, to chill
One's marrow in the bone.
But no—it grins like rigid Death,
And silent as a stone!

As silent as its fellows be,
For all is mute with them—
The branch that climbs the leafy roof—
The rough and mossy stem—
The crooked root,
And tender shoot,
Where hangs the dewy gem.

One mystic Tree alone there is,
Of sad and solemn sound—
That sometimes murmurs overhead,
And sometimes underground—
In all that shady Avenue,
Where lofty Elms abound.

II. PART II.

The Scene is changed! No green Arcade,
No Trees all ranged a-row—
But scatter'd like a beaten host,
Dispersing to and fro;
With here and there a sylvan corse,
That fell before the foe.

The Foe that down in yonder dell
Pursues his daily toil;
As witness many a prostrate trunk,
Bereft of leafy spoil,
Hard by its wooden stump, whereon
The adder loves to coil.

Alone he works—his ringing blows
Have banish'd bird and beast;
The Hind and Fawn have canter'd off
A hundred yards at least;
And on the maple's lofty top,
The linnet's song has ceased.

No eye his labour overlooks,
Or when he takes his rest;
Except the timid thrush that peeps
Above her secret nest,
Forbid by love to leave the young
Beneath her speckled breast.

The Woodman's heart is in his work,
His axe is sharp and good:
With sturdy arm and steady aim
He smites the gaping wood;
From distant rocks
His lusty knocks
Re-echo many a rood.

His axe is keen, his arm is strong;
The muscles serve him well;
His years have reach'd an extra span,
The number none can tell;
But still his lifelong task has been
The Timber Tree to fell.

Through Summer's parching sultriness,
And Winter's freezing cold,
From sapling youth
To virile growth,
And Age's rigid mould,
His energetic axe hath rung
Within that Forest old.

Aloft, upon his poising steel
The vivid sunbeams glance—
About his head and round his feet

The forest shadows dance;
And bounding from his russet coat
The acorn drops askance.

His face is like a Druid's face,
With wrinkles furrow'd deep,
And tann'd by scorching suns as brown
As corn, that's ripe to reap;
But the hair on brow, and cheek, and chin,
Is white as wool of sheep.

His frame is like a giant's frame;
His legs are long and stark;
His arms like limbs of knotted yew;
His hands like rugged bark;
So he felleth still
With right good will,
As if to build an Ark!

Oh! well within His fatal path
The fearful Tree might quake
Through every fibre, twig, and leaf,
With aspen tremor shake;
Through trunk and root,
And branch and shoot,
A low complaining make!

Oh! well to Him the Tree might breathe
A sad and solemn sound,
A sigh that murmur'd overhead,
And groans from underground;
As in that shady Avenue
Where lofty Elms abound!

But calm and mute the Maple stands,
The Plane, the Ash, the Fir,
The Elm, the Beech, the drooping Birch,
Without the least demur;
And e'en the Aspen's hoary leaf
Makes no unusual stir.

The Pines—those old gigantic Pines,
That writhe—recalling soon
The famous Human Group that writhes
With Snakes in wild festoon—
In ramous wrestlings interlaced
A Forest Läocoon—

Like Titans of primeval girth
By tortures overcome,
Their brown enormous limbs they twine
Bedew'd with tears of gum—
Fierce agonies that ought to yell,
But, like the marble, dumb.

Nay, yonder blasted Elm that stands
So like a man of sin,
Who, frantic, flings his arms abroad
To feel the Worm within—
For all that gesture, so intense,
It makes no sort of din!

An universal silence reigns
In rugged bark or peel,
Except that very trunk which rings
Beneath the biting steel—
Meanwhile the Woodman plies his axe
With unrelenting zeal!

No rustic song is on his tongue,
No whistle on his lips;
But with a quiet thoughtfulness
His trusty tool he grips,
And, stroke on stroke, keeps hacking out
The bright and flying chips.

Stroke after stroke, with frequent dint
He spreads the fatal gash;
Till, lo! the remnant fibres rend,
With harsh and sudden crash,
And on the dull resounding turf
The jarring branches lash!

Oh! now the Forest Trees may sigh,
The Ash, the Poplar tall,
The Elm, the Beech, the drooping Birch,
The Aspens—one and all,
With solemn groan
And hollow moan
Lament a comrade's fall!

A goodly Elm, of noble girth,
That, thrice the human span—
While on their variegated course
The constant Seasons ran—
Through gale, and hail, and fiery bolt,
Had stood erect as Man.

But now, like mortal Man himself,
Struck down by hand of God,
Or heathen Idol tumbled prone

Beneath th' Eternal's nod,
In all its giant bulk and length
It lies along the sod!—

Ay, now the Forest Trees may grieve
And make a common moan
Around that patriarchal trunk
So newly overthrown;
And with a murmur recognise
A doom to be their own!

The Echo sleeps: the idle axe,
A disregarded tool,
Lies crushing with its passive weight
The toad's reputed stool—
The Woodman wipes his dewy brow
Within the shadows cool.

No Zephyr stirs: the ear may catch
The smallest insect-hum;
But on the disappointed sense
No mystic whispers come;
No tone of sylvan sympathy,
The Forest Trees are dumb.

No leafy noise, nor inward voice,
No sad and solemn sound,
That sometimes murmurs overhead,
And sometimes underground;
As in that shady Avenue,
Where lofty Elms abound!

III. PART III.

The deed is done: the Tree is low
That stood so long and firm;
The Woodman and his axe are gone,
His toil has found its term;
And where he wrought the speckled Thrush
Securely hunts the worm.

The Cony from the sandy bank
Has run a rapid race,
Through thistle, bent, and tangled fern,
To seek the open space;
And on its haunches sits erect
To clean its furry face.

The dappled Fawn is close at hand,
The Hind is browsing near,—
And on the Larch's lowest bough
The Ousel whistles clear;
But checks the note
Within its throat,
As choked with sudden fear!

With sudden fear her wormy quest
The Thrush abruptly quits—
Through thistle, bent, and tangled fern
The startled Cony flits;
And on the Larch's lowest bough
No more the Ousel sits.

With sudden fear
The dappled Deer
Effect a swift escape;
But well might bolder creatures start,
And fly, or stand agape,
With rising hair, and curdled blood,
To see so grim a Shape!

The very sky turns pale above;
The earth grows dark beneath;
The human Terror thrills with cold
And draws a shorter breath—
An universal panic owns
The dread approach of Death!

With silent pace, as shadows come,
And dark as shadows be,
The grisly Phantom takes his stand
Beside the fallen Tree,
And scans it with his gloomy eyes,
And laughs with horrid glee—

A dreary laugh and desolate,
Where mirth is void and null,
As hollow as its echo sounds
Within the hollow skull—
“Whoever laid this tree along,
His hatchet was not dull!

“The human arm and human tool
Have done their duty well!
But after sound of ringing axe

Must sound the ringing knell;
When Elm or Oak
Have felt the stroke,
My turn it is to fell!

“No passive unregarded tree,
A senseless thing of wood,
Wherein the sluggish sap ascends
To swell the vernal bud—
But conscious, moving, breathing trunks
That throb with living blood!

“No forest Monarch yearly clad
In mantle green or brown;
That unrecorded lives, and falls
By hand of rustic clown—
But Kings who don the purple robe,
And wear the jewell'd crown.

“Ah! little recks the Royal mind,
Within his Banquet Hall,
While tapers shine and Music breathes
And Beauty leads the Ball,—
He little recks the oaken plank
Shall be his palace wall!

“Ah, little dreams the haughty Peer,
The while his Falcon flies—
Or on the blood-bedabbled turf
The antler'd quarry dies—
That in his own ancestral Park
The narrow dwelling lies!

“But haughty Peer and mighty King
One doom shall overwhelm!
The oaken cell
Shall lodge him well
Whose sceptre ruled a realm—
While he, who never knew a home,
Shall find it in the Elm!

“The tatter'd, lean, dejected wretch,
Who begs from door to door,
And dies within the cressy ditch,
Or on the barren moor,
The friendly Elm shall lodge and clothe
That houseless man and poor!

“Yea, this recumbent rugged trunk,
That lies so long and prone,
With many a fallen acorn-cup,
And mast, and firry cone—
This rugged trunk shall hold its share
Of mortal flesh and bone!

“A Miser hoarding heaps of gold,
But pale with ague-fears—
A Wife lamenting love's decay,
With secret cruel tears,
Distilling bitter, bitter drops
From sweets of former years—

“A Man within whose gloomy mind
Offence had deeply sunk,
Who out of fierce Revenge's cup

Hath madly, darkly drunk—
Grief, Avarice, and Hate shall sleep
Within this very trunk!

“This massy trunk that lies along,
And many more must fall—
For the very knave
Who digs the grave,
The man who spreads the pall,
And he who tolls the funeral bell,
The Elm shall have them all!

“The tall abounding Elm that grows
In hedgerows up and down;
In field and forest, copse and park,
And in the peopled town,
With colonies of noisy rooks
That nestle on its crown.

“And well th' abounding Elm may grow
In field and hedge so rife,
In forest, copse, and wooded park,
And 'mid the city's strife,
For, every hour that passes by
Shall end a human life!”

The Phantom ends: the shade is gone;
The sky is clear and bright;
On turf, and moss, and fallen Tree,
There glows a ruddy light;
And bounding through the golden fern
The Rabbit comes to bite.

The Thrush's mate beside her sits
And pipes a merry lay;
The Dove is in the evergreens;
And on the Larch's spray
The Fly-bird flutters up and down,
To catch its tiny prey.

The gentle Hind and dappled Fawn
Are coming up the glade;
Each harmless furr'd and feather'd thing
Is glad, and not afraid—
But on my sadden'd spirit still
The Shadow leaves a shade.

A secret, vague, prophetic gloom,
As though by certain mark
I knew the fore-appointed Tree,
Within whose rugged bark
This warm and living frame shall find
Its narrow house and dark.

That mystic Tree which breathed to me
A sad and solemn sound,
That sometimes murmur'd overhead,
And sometimes underground;
Within that shady Avenue
Where lofty Elms abound.

MORE HULLAH-BALOO.

“Loud as from numbers without number.” —Milton.

“You may do it extempore, for it's nothing but roaring.” Quince.

Amongst the great inventions of this age,
Which ev'ry other century surpasses,
Is one,—just now the rage,—
Call'd “Singing for all Classes”—
That is, for all the British millions,
And billions,
And quadrillions,
Not to name Quintilians,
That now, alas! have no more ear than asses,
To learn to warble like the birds in June,
In time and tune,
Correct as clocks, and musical as glasses!

In fact, a sort of plan,
Including gentleman as well as yokel,
Public or private man,
To call out a Militia,—only Vocal
Instead of Local,
And not designed for military follies,
But keeping still within the civil border,
To form with mouths in open order,
And sing in volleys.

Whether this grand harmonic scheme
Will ever get beyond a dream,

And tend to British happiness and glory,
Maybe no, and maybe yes,
Is more than I pretend to guess—
However, here's my story.

In one of those small, quiet streets,
Where Business retreats,
To shun the daily bustle and the noise
The shoppy Strand enjoys,
But Law, Joint-Companies, and Life Assurance
Find past endurance—
In one of those back streets, to Peace so dear,
The other day, a ragged wight
Began to sing with all his might,
“I have a silent sorrow here!”

The place was lonely; not a creature stirr'd
Except some little dingy bird;
Or vagrant cur that sniff'd along,
Indifferent to the Son of Song;
No truant errand-boy, or Doctor's lad,
No idle filch or lounging cad,
No Pots encumber'd with diurnal beer,
No printer's devil with an author's proof,
Or housemaid on an errand far aloof,
Linger'd the tatter'd Melodist to hear—
Who yet, confound him! bawl'd as loud
As if he had to charm a London crowd,
Singing beside the public way,
Accompanied—instead of violin,
Flute, or piano, chiming in—
By rumbling cab, and omnibus, and dray,

A van with iron bars to play staccato,
Or engine obligato—
In short, without one instrument vehicular
(Not ev'n a truck, to be particular),
There stood the rogue and roar'd,
Unasked and unencored,
Enough to split the organs call'd auricular!

Heard in that quiet place,
Devoted to a still and studious race,
The noise was quite appalling!
To seek a fitting simile and spin it,
Appropriate to his calling,
His voice had all Lablache's body in it;
But oh! the scientific tone it lack'd,
And was, in fact,
Only a forty-boatswain-power of bawling!

'Twas said, indeed, for want of vocal nous,
The stage had banish'd him when he attempted it,
For tho' his voice completely fill'd the house,
It also emptied it.
However, there he stood
Vociferous—a ragged don!
And with his iron pipes laid on
A row to all the neighbourhood.

In vain were sashes closed
And doors against the persevering Stentor,
Though brick, and glass, and solid oak opposed,
Th' intruding voice would enter,
Heedless of ceremonial or decorum,
Den, office, parlour, study, and sanctorum;

Where clients and attorneys, rogues, and fools,
Ladies, and masters who attended schools,
Clerks, agents, all provided with their tools,
Were sitting upon sofas, chairs, and stools,
With shelves, pianos, tables, desks, before 'em—
How it did bore 'em!

Louder, and louder still,
The fellow sang with horrible goodwill,
Curses both loud and deep his sole gratuities,
From scribes bewilder'd making many a flaw
In deeds of law
They had to draw;
With dreadful incongruities
In posting ledgers, making up accounts
To large amounts,
Or casting up annuities—
Stunn'd by that voice, so loud and hoarse,
Against whose overwhelming force
No in-voice stood a chance, of course!

The Actuary pshaw'd and pish'd,
And knit his calculating brows, and wish'd
The singer “a bad life”—a mental murther!
The Clerk, resentful of a blot and blunder,
Wish'd the musician further,
Poles distant—and no wonder!
For Law and Harmony tend far asunder—
The lady could not keep her temper calm,
Because the sinner did not sing a psalm—
The Fiddler in the very same position
As Hogarth's chafed musician
(Such prints require but cursory reminders)

Came and made faces at the wretch beneath,
And wishing for his foe between his teeth,
(Like all impatient elves
That spite themselves)
Ground his own grinders.

But still with unrelenting note,
Though not a copper came of it, in verity,
The horrid fellow with the ragged coat,
And iron throat,
Heedless of present honour and prosperity,
Sang like a Poet singing for posterity,
In penniless reliance—
And, sure, the most immortal Man of Rhyme
Never set Time
More thoroughly at defiance!

From room to room, from floor to floor,
From Number One to Twenty-four
The Nuisance bellow'd, till all patience lost,
Down came Miss Frost,
Expostulating at her open door—
“Peace, monster, peace!
Where is the New Police!
I vow I cannot work, or read, or pray,
Don't stand there bawling, fellow, don't!
You really send my serious thoughts astray,
Do—there's a dear good man—do go away.”
Says he, “I won't!”

The spinster pull'd her door to with a slam,
That sounded like a wooden d---n,

For so some moral people, strictly loth
To swear in words, however up,
Will crash a curse in setting down a cup,
Or through a doorpost vent a banging oath—
In fact, this sort of physical transgression
Is really no more difficult to trace
Than in a given face
A very bad expression.

However, in she went,
Leaving the subject of her discontent
To Mr. Jones's Clerk at Number Ten;
Who, throwing up the sash,
With accents rash,
Thus hail'd the most vociferous of men:
“Come, come, I say old fellor, stop your chant!
I cannot write a sentence—no one can't!
So just pack up your trumps,
And stir your stumps—”
Says he, “I shan't!”

Down went the sash
As if devoted to “eternal smash”
(Another illustration
Of acted imprecation),
While close at hand, uncomfortably near,
The independent voice, so loud and strong,
And clanging like a gong,
Roar'd out again the everlasting song,
“I have a silent sorrow here!”

The thing was hard to stand!
The Music-master could not stand it—

But rushing forth with fiddle-stick in hand,
As savage as a bandit,
Made up directly to the tatter'd man,
And thus in broken sentences began—
But playing first a prelude of grimaces,
Twisting his features to the strangest shapes,
So that to guess his subject from his faces,
He meant to give a lecture upon apes—

“Com—com—I say!
You go away!
Into two parts my head you split—
My fiddle cannot hear himself a bit,
When I do play—
You have no bis'ness in a place so still!
Can you not come another day?”
Says he—“I will.”

“No—no—you scream and bawl!
You must not come at all!
You have no rights, by rights, to beg—
You have not one off leg—
You ought to work—you have not some complaint—
You are not cripple in your back or bones—
Your voice is strong enough to break some stones”—
Says he—“It aint!”

“I say you ought to labour!
You are in a young case,
You have not sixty years upon your face,
To come and beg your neighbour,
And discompose his music with a noise
More worse than twenty boys—

Look what a street it is for quiet!
No cart to make a riot,
No coach, no horses, no postilion,
If you will sing, I say, it is not just
To sing so loud.”—Says he, “I must!
I'm singing for the million!”

THE SEASON.

Summer's gone and over!
Fogs are falling down;
And with russet tinges
Autumn's doing brown.

Boughs are daily rifled
By the gusty thieves,
And the Book of Nature
Getteth short of leaves.

Round the tops of houses,
Swallows, as they flit,
Give, like yearly tenants,
Notices to quit.

Skies, of fickle temper,
Weep by turns, and laugh—
Night and Day together
Taking half-and-half.

So September endeth—
Cold, and most perverse—
But the Month that follows,
Sure will pinch us worse!

LEAR.

A poor old king, with sorrow for my crown,
Throned upon straw, and mantled with the wind—
For pity, my own tears have made me blind
That I might never see my children's frown;
And, may be, Madness, like a friend, has thrown
A folded fillet over my dark mind,
So that unkindly speech may sound for kind—
Albeit I know not.—I am childish grown—
And have not gold to purchase wit withal—
I that have once maintain'd most royal state—
A very bankrupt now that may not call
My child my child—all beggar'd save in tears,
Wherewith I daily weep an old man's fate,
Foolish—and blind—and overcome with years!

123

SONG. TO MY WIFE.

Those eyes that were so bright, love,
Have now a dimmer shine,—
But all they've lost in light, love,
Was what they gave to mine;
But still those orbs reflect, love,
The beams of former hours,—
That ripen'd all my joys, my love,
And tinted all my flowers!

Those locks were brown to see, love,
That now are turned so gray,—
But the years were spent with me, love,
That stole their hue away;
Thy locks no longer share, love,
The golden glow of noon,—
But I've seen the world look fair, my love,
When silver'd by the moon!

That brow was smooth and fair, love,
That looks so shaded now,—
But for me it bore the care, love,
That spoiled a bonny brow.
And though no longer there, love,
The gloss it had of yore,—
Still Memory looks and dotes, my love,
Where Hope admired before!

124

1843.

THE FORGE.

A ROMANCE OF THE IRON AGE.

“Who's here, beside foul weather?” —King Lear.

“Mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me,
Should have stood that night against my fire.”
—Cordelia.

I. PART I.

Like a dead man gone to his shroud,
The sun has sunk in a coppery cloud,
And the wind is rising squally and loud
With many a stormy token,—
Playing a wild funereal air,
Through the branches bleak, bereaved, and bare,
To the dead leaves dancing here and there—
In short, if the truth were spoken,
It's an ugly night for anywhere,
But an awful one for the Brocken!

125

For oh! to stop
On that mountain top,
After the dews of evening drop,
Is always a dreary frolic—
Then what must it be when nature groans,
And the very mountain murmurs and moans
As if it writhed with the cholic—
With other strange supernatural tones,
From wood, and water, and echoing stones,
Not to forget unburied bones—
In a region so diabolic!

A place where he whom we call old Scratch,
By help of his Witches—a precious batch—
Gives midnight concerts and sermons,
In a Pulpit and Orchestra built to match,
A plot right worthy of him to hatch,
And well adapted, he knows, to catch
The musical, mystical Germans!

However it's quite
As wild a night
As ever was known on that sinister height
Since the Demon-Dance was morriced—
The earth is dark, and the sky is scowling,
And the blast through the pines is howling and growling
As if a thousand wolves were prowling
About in the old Black Forest!

Madly, sadly, the Tempest raves
Through the narrow gullies and hollow caves,
And bursts on the rocks in windy waves,

126

Like the billows that roar
On a gusty shore
Mourning over the mariners' graves—
Nay, more like a frantic lamentation
From a howling set
Of demons met
To wake a dead relation.

Badly, madly, the vapours fly
Over the dark distracted sky,
At a pace that no pen can paint!
Black and vague like the shadows of dreams,
Scudding over the moon that seems,
Shorn of half her usual beams,
As pale as if she would faint!

The lightning flashes,
The thunder crashes,
The trees encounter with horrible clashes,
While rolling up from marish and bog,
Rank and rich,
As from Stygian ditch,
Rises a foul sulphureous fog,
Hinting that Satan himself is agog,—
But leaving at once this heroical pitch,
The night is a very bad night in which
You wouldn't turn out a dog.

Yet ONE there is abroad in the storm,
And whenever by chance
The moon gets a glance,
She spies the Traveller's lonely form,
Walking, leaping, striding along,
As none can do but the super-strong;

127

And flapping his arms to keep him warm,
For the breeze from the North is a regular starver,
And to tell the truth,
More keen, in sooth,
And cutting than any German carver!

However, no time it is to lag,
And on he scrambles from crag to crag,
Like one determined never to flag—
Now weathers a block
Of jutting rock,
With hardly room for a toe to wag;
But holding on by a timber snag,
That looks like the arm of a friendly hag;
Then stooping under a drooping bough,
Or leaping over some horrid chasm,
Enough to give any heart a spasm!
And sinking down a precipice now,
Keeping his feet the Deuce knows how,
In spots whence all creatures would keep aloof,
Except the Goat, with his cloven hoof,
Who clings to the shallowest ledge as if
He grew like the weed on the face of the cliff!

So down, still down, the Traveller goes,
Safe as the Chamois amid his snows,
Though fiercer than ever the hurricane blows,
And round him eddy, with whirl and whizz,
Tornadoes of hail, and sleet, and rain,
Enough to bewilder a weaker brain,
Or blanch any other visage than his,
Which spite of lightning, thunder, and hail,
The blinding sleet and the freezing gale,

128

And the horrid abyss,
If his foot should miss,
Instead of tending at all to pale,
Like cheeks that feel the chill of affright—
Remains—the very reverse of white!

His heart is granite—his iron nerve
Feels no convulsive twitches;
And as to his foot, it does not swerve,
Tho' the Screech-Owls are flitting about him that serve
For parrots to Brocken Witches!

Nay, full in his very path he spies
The gleam of the Were Wolf's horrid eyes;
But if his members quiver—
It is not for that—no, it is not for that—
Nor rat,
Nor cat,
As black as your hat,
Nor the snake that hiss'd, nor the toad that spat,
Nor glimmering candles of dead men's fat,
Nor even the flap of the Vampire Bat,
No anserine skin would rise thereat,
It's the cold that makes Him shiver!

So down, still down, through gully and glen,
Never trodden by foot of men,
Past the Eagle's nest, and the She-Wolf's den,
Never caring a jot how steep
Or how narrow the track he has to keep,
Or how wide and deep
An abyss to leap,

129

Or what may fly, or walk, or creep,
Down he hurries through darkness and storm,
Flapping his arms to keep him warm—
Till threading many a pass abhorrent,
At last he reaches the mountain gorge,
And takes a path along by a torrent—
The very identical path, by St. George!
Down which young Fridolin went to the Forge,
With a message meant for his own death-warrant!

Young Fridolin; young Fridolin!
So free from sauce, and sloth, and sin,
The best of pages
Whatever their ages,
Since first that singular fashion came in—
Not he like those modern and idle young gluttons
With little jackets, so smart and spruce,
Of Lincoln green, sky-blue, or puce—
A little gold lace you may introduce—
Very showy, but as for use,
Not worth so many buttons!

Young Fridolin; young Fridolin!
Of his duty so true a fulfiller—
But here we need no farther go
For whoever desires the Tale to know,
May read it all in Schiller.

Faster now the Traveller speeds,
Whither his guiding beacon leads,
For by yonder glare
In the murky air,

130

He knows that the Eisen Hutte is there!
With its sooty Cyclops, savage and grim,
Hosts, a guest had better forbear,
Whose thoughts are set upon dainty fare—
But stiff with cold in every limb,
The Furnace Fire is the bait for Him!
Faster and faster still he goes,
Whilst redder and redder the welkin glows,
And the lowest clouds that scud in the sky
Get crimson fringes in flitting by.
Till lo! amid the lurid light,
The darkest object intensely dark,
Just where the bright is intensely bright,
The Forge, the Forge itself is in sight,
Like the pitch-black hull of a burning bark,
With volleying smoke, and many a spark,
Vomiting fire, red, yellow, and white!

Restless, quivering tongues of flame!
Heavenward striving still to go,
While others, reversed in the stream below,
Seem seeking a place we will not name,
But well that Traveller knows the same,
Who stops and stands,
So rubbing his hands,
And snuffing the rare
Perfumes in the air,
For old familiar odours are there,
And then direct by the shortest cut,
Like Alpine Marmot, whom neither rut,
Rivers, rocks, nor thickets rebut,
Makes his way to the blazing Hut!

131

II. PART II.

Idly watching the Furnace-flames,
The men of the stithy
Are in their smithy,
Brutal monsters, with bulky frames,
Beings Humanity scarcely claims,
But hybrids rather of demon race,
Unbless'd by the holy rite of grace,
Who never had gone by Christian names,
Mark, or Matthew, Peter, or James—
Naked, foul, unshorn, unkempt,
From touch of natural shame exempt,
Things of which Delirium has dreamt—
But wherefore dwell on these verbal sketches,
When traced with frightful truth and vigour,
Costume, attitude, face, and figure,
Retsch has drawn the very wretches!
However, there they lounge about,
The grim, gigantic fellows,
Hardly hearing the storm without,
That makes so very dreadful a rout,
For the constant roar
From the furnace door,
And the blast of the monstrous bellows!
Oh, what a scene
That Forge had been
For Salvator Rosa's study!
With wall, and beam, and post, and pin,

132

And those ruffianly creatures, like Shapes of Sin,
Hair, and eyes, and rusty skin,
Illumed by a light so ruddy
The Hut, and whatever there is therein,
Looks either red-hot or bloody!
And, oh! to hear the frequent burst
Of strange, extravagant laughter,
Harsh and hoarse,
And resounding perforce
From echoing roof and rafter!
Though curses, the worst
That ever were curst,
And threats that Cain invented the first,
Come growling the instant after!
But again the livelier peal is rung,
For the Smith, hight Salamander,
In the jargon of some Titanic tongue,
Elsewhere never said or sung,
With the voice of a Stentor in joke has flung
Some cumbrous sort
Of sledge-hammer retort
At Red Beard, the crew's commander.
Some frightful jest—who knows how wild,
Or obscene, from a monster so defiled,
And a horrible mouth, of such extent,
From flapping ear to ear it went,
And show'd such tusks whenever it smiled—
The very mouth to devour a child!
But fair or foul the jest gives birth
To another bellow of demon mirth,

133

That far outroars the weather,
As if all the Hyænas that prowl the earth
Had clubb'd their laughs together!
And lo! in the middle of all the din,
Not seeming to care a single pin
For a prospect so volcanic,
A Stranger steps abruptly in,
Of an aspect rather Satanic:
And he looks with a grin, at those Cyclops grim,
Who stare and grin again at him
With wondrous little panic.
Then up to the Furnace the Stranger goes,
Eager to thaw his ears and nose,
And warm his frozen fingers and toes—
While each succeeding minute,
Hotter and hotter the Smithy grows,
And seems to declare,
By a fiercer glare,
On wall, roof, floor, and everywhere,
It knows the Devil is in it!
Still not a word
Is utter'd or heard,
But the beetle-brow'd Foreman nods and winks
Much as a shaggy old Lion blinks,
And makes a shift
To impart his drift
To a smoky brother, who joining the links,
Hints to a third the thing he thinks;
And whatever it be,
They all agree

134

In smiling with faces full of glee,
As if about to enjoy High Jinks.
What sort of tricks they mean to play
By way of diversion, who can say,
Of such ferocious and barbarous folk,
Who chuckled, indeed, and never spoke
Of burning Robert the Jäger to coke,
Except as a capital practical joke!
Who never thought of Mercy, or heard her,
Or any gentle emotion felt;
But hard as the iron they had to melt,
Sported with Danger and romp'd with Murder!
Meanwhile the Stranger—
The Brocken Ranger,
Besides another and hotter post,
That renders him not averse to a roast,—
Creeping into the Furnace almost,
Has made himself as warm as a toast—
When, unsuspicious of any danger,
And least of all of any such maggot,
As treating his body like a faggot,
All at once he is seized and shoven
In pastime cruel,
Like so much fuel,
Headlong into the blazing oven!
In he goes! with a frightful shout
Mock'd by the rugged ruffianly band,
As round the Furnace mouth they stand,
Bar, and shovel, and ladle in hand,
To hinder their Butt from crawling out,

135

Who making one fierce attempt, but vain,
Receives such a blow
From Red-Beard's crow
As crashes the skull and gashes the brain,
And blind, and dizzy, and stunn'd with pain,
With merely an interjectional “oh!”
Back he rolls in the flames again.
“Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho!” That second fall
Seems the very best joke of all,
To judge by the roar
Twice as loud as before,
That fills the Hut, from the roof to the floor,
And flies a league or two out of the door,
Up the mountain and over the moor—
But scarcely the jolly echoes they wake
Have well begun
To take up the fun,
Ere the shaggy Felons have cause to quake,
And begin to feel that the deed they have done,
Instead of being a pleasant one,
Was a very great error—and no mistake.
For why?—in lieu
Of its former hue,
So natural, warm, and florid,
The Furnace burns of a brimstone blue,
And instead of the couleur de rose it threw,
With a cooler reflection,—justly due—
Exhibits each of the Pagan crew,
Livid, ghastly, and horrid!

136

But vainly they close their guilty eyes
Against prophetic fears;
Or with hard and horny palms devise
To dam their enormous ears—
There are sounds in the air,
Not here or there,
Irresistible voices everywhere,
No bulwarks can ever rebut,
And to match the screams,
Tremendous gleams,
Of Horrors that like the Phantoms of dreams
They see with their eyelids shut!
For awful coveys of terrible things,
With forked tongues and venomous stings,
On hagweed, broomsticks, and leathern wings,
Are hovering round the Hut!
Shapes, that within the focus bright
Of the Forge, are like shadows and blots;
But farther off, in the shades of night,
Clothed with their own phosphoric light,
Are seen in the darkest spots.
Sounds! that fill the air with noises,
Strange and indescribable voices,
From Hags, in a diabolical clatter—
Cats that spit curses, and apes that chatter
Scraps of cabalistical matter—
Owls that screech, and dogs that yell—
Skeleton hounds that will never be fatter—
All the domestic tribes of Hell,
Shrieking for flesh to tear and tatter,

137

Bones to shatter,
And limbs to scatter,
And who it is that must furnish the latter
Those blue-looking Men know well!
Those blue-looking men that huddle together,
For all their sturdy limbs and thews,
Their unshorn locks, like Nazarene Jews,
And buffalo beards, and hides of leather,
Huddled all in a heap together,
Like timid lamb, and ewe, and wether,
And as females say,
In a similar way,
Fit for knocking down with a feather!
In and out, in and out,
The gathering Goblins hover about,
Ev'ry minute augmenting the rout;
For like a spell
The unearthly smell
That fumes from the Furnace, chimney and mouth,
Draws them in—an infernal Legion—
From East, and West, and North, and South,
Like carrion birds from ev'ry region,
Till not a yard square
Of the sickening air
But has a Demon or two for its share,
Breathing fury, woe, and despair,
Never, never was such a sight!
It beats the very Walpurgis Night,
Displayed in the story of Doctor Faustus,
For the scene to describe
Of the awful tribe,
If we were two Göthe's, would quite exhaust us

138

Suffice it, amid that dreary swarm,
There musters each foul repulsive form
That ever a fancy overwarm
Begot in its worst delirium;
Besides some others of monstrous size,
Never before revealed to eyes,
Of the genus Megatherium!
Meanwhile the demons, filthy and foul,
Gorgon, Chimera, Harpy, and Ghoul,
Are not contented to jibber and howl
As a dirge for their late commander;
But one of the bevy—witch or wizard,
Disguised as a monstrous flying lizard,
Springs on the grisly Salamander,
Who stoutly fights, and struggles, and kicks,
And tries the best of his wrestling tricks,
No paltry strife,
But for life, dear life,
But the ruthless talons refuse to unfix,
Till far beyond a surgical case,
With starting eyes, and black in the face,
Down he tumbles as dead as bricks!
A pretty sight for his mates to view!
Those shaggy murderers looking so blue,
And for him above all,
Red-bearded and tall,
With whom, at that very particular nick,
There is such an unlucky crow to pick,
As the one of iron that did the trick
In a recent bloody affair—

139

No wonder feeling a little sick,
With pulses beating uncommonly quick,
And breath he never found so thick,
He longs for the open air!
Three paces, or four,
And he gains the door;
But ere he accomplishes one,
The sound of a blow comes, heavy and dull.
And clasping his fingers round his skull—
However the deed was done,
That gave him that florid
Red gash on the forehead—
With a roll of the eyeballs perfectly horrid,
There's a tremulous quiver,
The last death-shiver,
And Red-Beard's course is run!
Halloo! Halloo!
They have done for two!
But a heavyish job remains to do!
For yonder, sledge and shovel in hand,
Like elder Sons of Giant Despair,
A couple of Cyclops make a stand,
And fiercely hammering here and there,
Keep at bay the Powers of Air—
But desperation is all in vain!—
They faint—they choke,
For the sulphurous smoke
Is poisoning heart, and lung, and brain,
They reel, they sink, they gasp, they smother,
One for a moment survives his brother,
Then rolls a corpse across the other!

140

Hulloo! Hulloo!
And Hullabaloo!
There is only one more thing to do—
And seized by beak, and talon, and claw,
Bony hand, and hairy paw,
Yea, crooked horn, and tusky jaw,
The four huge Bodies are haul'd and shoven
Each after each in the roaring oven!

That Eisen Hutte is standing still,
Go to the Hartz whenever you will,
And there it is beside a hill,
And a rapid stream that turns many a mill;
The self-same Forge,—you'll know it at sight—
Casting upward, day and night,
Flames of red, and yellow, and white!

Ay, half a mile from the mountain gorge,
There it is, the famous Forge,
With its Furnace,—the same that blazed of yore,—
Hugely fed with fuel and ore;
But ever since that tremendous Revel,
Whatever Iron is melted therein,—
As Travellers know who have been to Berlin—
Is all as black as the Devil!

141

A CUSTOM-HOUSE BREEZE.

One day—no matter for the month or year,
A Calais packet, just come over,
And safely moor'd within the pier,
Began to land her passengers at Dover;
All glad to end a voyage long and rough,
And during which,
Through roll and pitch,
The Ocean-King had sickophants enough!

Away, as fast as they could walk or run,
Eager for steady rooms and quiet meals,
With bundles, bags, and boxes at their heels,
Away the passengers all went but one,
A female, who from some mysterious check,
Still linger'd on the steamer's deck,
As if she did not care for land a tittle,
For horizontal rooms, and cleanly victual—
Or nervously afraid to put
Her foot
Into an Isle described as “tight and little.”

In vain commissioner and touter,
Porter and waiter throng'd about her;
Boring, as such officials only bore—
In spite of rope and barrow, knot and truck,
Of plank and ladder, there she stuck,
She couldn't, no, she wouldn't go on shore.

142

“But, ma'am,” the steward interfered,
“The wessel must be cleared.
You mustn't stay aboard, ma'am, no one don't!
It's quite agin the orders so to do—
And all the passengers is gone but you.”
Says she, “I cannot go ashore and won't!”
“You ought to!”
“But I can't!”
“You must!”
“I shan't!”

At last, attracted by the racket,
'Twixt gown and jacket,
The captain came himself, and cap in hand,
Begg'd very civilly to understand
Wherefore the lady could not leave the packet.

“Why then,” the lady whispered with a shiver,
That made the accents quiver,
“I've got some foreign silks about me pinn'd,
In short so many things, all contraband,
To tell the truth I am afraid to land,
In such a searching wind!”

145

LAYING DOWN THE LAW.

------ “I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips let no dog bark.”
Merchant of Venice.

“If thou wert born a Dog, remain so; but if thou wert born a Man, resume thy former shape.” —Arabian Nights.

A poodle, Judge-like, with emphatic paw,
Dogmatically laying down the law,—
A batch of canine Counsel round the table,
Keen-eyed, and sharp of nose, and long of jaw,
At sight, at scent, at giving tongue, right able:
O, Edwin Landseer, Esquire, and R. A.,
Thou great Pictorial Æsop, say,
What is the moral of this painted fable?

O, say, accomplished artist!
Was it thy purpose, by a scene so quizzical,
To read a wholesome lesson to the Chartist,
So over partial to the means called Physical,
Sticks, staves, and swords, and guns, the tools of treason?
To show, illustrating the better course,
The very Brutes abandoning Brute Force,
The worry and the fight,
The bark and bite,
In which, says Doctor Watts, the dogs delight,
And lending shaggy ears to Law and Reason,
As utter'd in that Court of high antiquity
Where sits the Chancellor, supreme as Pope,

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But works—so let us hope—
In equity, not iniquity?

Or was it but a speculation
On transmigration,
How certain of our most distinguished Daniels,
Interpreters of Law's bewildering book,
Would look
Transform'd to mastiffs, setters, hounds, and spaniels
(As Brahmins in their Hindoo code advance),
With that great lawyer of the Upper House
Who rules all suits by equitable nous,
Become—like vile Armina's spouse—
A Dog, called Chance?
Methinks, indeed, I recognise
In those deep-set and meditative eyes
Engaged in mental puzzle,
And that portentous muzzle,
A celebrated judge, too prone to tarry
To hesitate on devious ins and outs,
And, on preceding doubts, to build re-doubts
That regiments could not carry—
Prolonging even Law's delays, and still
Putting a skid upon the wheel up-hill,
Meanwhile the weary and desponding client
Seem'd—in the agonies of indecision—
In Doubting Castle, with that dreadful Giant
Described in Bunyan's Vision!

So slow, indeed, was justice in its ways,
Beset by more than customary clogs,

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Going to law in those expensive days
Was much the same as going to the Dogs!
But possibly I err,
And that sagacious and judicial Creature,
So Chancellor-like in feature,
With ears so wig-like, and a cap of fur,
Looking as grave, responsible, and sage,
As if he had the guardianship, in fact,
Of all poor dogs, or crackt,
And puppies under age—
It may be that the Creature was not meant
Any especial Lord to represent,
Eldon or Erskine, Cottenham or Thurlow,
Or Brougham (more like him whose potent jaw
Is holding forth the letter of the law),
Or Lyndhurst, after the vacation's furlough,
Presently sitting in the House of Peers,
On wool he sometimes wishes in his ears,
When touching Corn Laws, Taxes, or Tithe-piggery,
He hears a fierce attack,
And, sitting on his sack,
Listens in his great wig to greater Whiggery!

So, possibly, those others,
In coats so various, or sleek, or rough,
Aim not at any of the legal brothers,
Who wear the silken robe, or gown of stuff.
Yet who that ever heard or saw
The Counsel sitting in that solemn Court,
Who, having pass'd the Bar, are safe in port,
Or those great Sergeants, learned in the Law,—
Who but must trace a feature now and then
Of those forensic men,

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As good at finding heirs as any harrier,
Renown'd like greyhounds for long tales—indeed,
At worrying the ear as apt as terriers,—
Good at conveyance as the hairy carriers
That bear our gloves, umbrellas, hats, and sticks,
Books, baskets, bones, or bricks,
In Deeds of Trust as sure as Tray the trusty,—
Acute at sniffing flaws on legal grounds,—
And lastly—well the catalogue it closes!—
Still following their predecessors' noses,
Through ways however dull or dusty,
As fond of hunting precedents, as hounds
Of running after foxes more than musty.

However slow or fast,
Full of urbanity, or supercilious,
In temper wild, serene, or atrabilious,
Fluent of tongue, or prone to legal saw,
The Dogs have got a Chancellor, at last,
For Laying down the Law!
And never may the canine race regret it,
With whinings and repinings loud or deep,—
Ragged in coat, and shorten'd in their keep,
Worried by day, and troubled in their sleep,
With cares that prey upon the heart and fret it—
As human suitors have had cause to weep—
For what is Law, unless poor Dogs can get it Dog-cheap?

149

ETCHING MORALISED.

TO A NOBLE LADY.

“To point a moral.” —Johnson.

Fairest Lady and Noble, for once on a time,
Condescend to accept, in the humblest of rhyme,
And a style more of Gay than of Milton,
A few opportune verses design'd to impart
Some didactical hints in a Needlework Art,
Not described by the Countess of Wilton.

An Art not unknown to the delicate hand
Of the fairest and first in this insular land,
But in Patronage Royal delighting;
And which now your own feminine fantasy wins,
Tho' it scarce seems a lady-like work, that begins
In a scratching and ends in a biting!

Yet oh! that the dames of the Scandalous School
Would but use the same acid, and sharp-pointed tool,
That are plied in the said operations—
Oh! would that our Candours on copper would sketch!
For the first of all things in beginning to etch
Are—good grounds for our representations.

Those protective and delicate coatings of wax,
Which are meant to resist the corrosive attacks
That would ruin the copper completely;
Thin cerements which whoso remembers the Bee

150

So applauded by Watts, the divine LL.D.,
Will be careful to spread very neatly.

For why? like some intricate deed of the law,
Should the ground in the process be left with a flaw,
Aqua-fortis is far from a joker;
And attacking the part that no coating protects,
Will turn out as distressing to all your effects
As a landlord who puts in a broker.

Then carefully spread the conservative stuff,
Until all the bright metal is cover'd enough,
To repel a destructive so active;
For in Etching, as well as in Morals, pray note
That a little raw spot, or a hole in a coat,
Your ascetics find vastly attractive.

Thus the ground being laid, very even and flat,
And then smoked with a taper, till black as a hat,
Still from future disasters to screen it,
Just allow me, by way of precaution, to state,
You must hinder the footman from changing your plate,
Nor yet suffer the butler to clean it.

Nay, the housemaid, perchance, in her passion to scrub,
May suppose the dull metal in want of a rub,
Like the Shield which Swift's readers remember—
Not to mention the chance of some other mishaps,
Such as having your copper made up into caps
To be worn on the First of September.

But aloof from all damage by Betty or John,
You secure the veil'd surface, and trace thereupon

151

The design you conceive the most proper:
Yet gently, and not with a needle too keen,
Lest it pierce to the wax through the paper between,
And of course play Old Scratch with the copper.

So in worldly affairs, the sharp-practising man
Is not always the one who succeeds in his plan,
Witness Shylock's judicial exposure;
Who, as keen as his knife, yet with agony found,
That while urging his point he was losing his ground,
And incurring a fatal disclosure.

But, perhaps, without tracing at all, you may choose
To indulge in some little extempore views,
Like the older artistical people;
For example, a Corydon playing his pipe,
In a Low Country marsh, with a Cow after Cuyp,
And a Goat skipping over a steeple.

A wild Deer at a rivulet taking a sup,
With a couple of Pillars put in to fill up,
Like the columns of certain diurnals;
Or a very brisk sea, in a very stiff gale,
And a very Dutch boat, with a very big sail—
Or a bevy of Retzsch's Infernals.

Architectural study—or rich Arabesque—
Allegorical dream—or a view picturesque,
Near to Naples, or Venice, or Florence;
Or “as harmless as lambs and as gentle as doves,”
A sweet family cluster of plump little Loves,
Like the Children by Reynolds or Lawrence.

152

But whatever the subject, your exquisite taste
Will ensure a design very charming and chaste,
Like yourself, full of nature and beauty—
Yet besides the good points you already reveal,
You will need a few others—of well-temper'd steel,
And especially form'd for the duty.

For suppose that the tool be imperfectly set,
Over many weak lengths in your line you will fret,
Like a pupil of Walton and Cotton,
Who remains by the brink of the water, agape,
While the jack, trout, or barbel effects its escape
Thro' the gut or silk line being rotten.

Therefore, let the steel point be set truly and round,
That the finest of strokes may be even and sound,
Flowing glibly where fancy would lead 'em.
But alas! for the needle that fetters the hand,
And forbids even sketches of Liberty's land
To be drawn with the requisite freedom!

Oh! the botches I've seen by a tool of the sort,
Rather hitching than etching, and making, in short,
Such stiff, crabbed, and angular scratches,
That the figures seem'd statues or mummies from tombs,
While the trees were as rigid as bundles of brooms,
And the herbage like bunches of matches!

The stiff clouds as if carefully iron'd and starch'd,
While a cast-iron bridge, meant for wooden, o'er-arch'd
Something more like a road than a river.
Prythee, who in such characteristics could see

153

Any trace of the beautiful land of the free—
The Free-Mason—Free-Trader—Free-Liver!

But prepared by a hand that is skilful and nice,
The fine point glides along like a skate on the ice,
At the will of the Gentle Designer,
Who impelling the needle just presses so much,
That each line of her labour the copper may touch,
As if done by a penny-a-liner.

And behold! how the fast-growing images gleam!
Like the sparkles of gold in a sunshiny stream,
Till perplex'd by the glittering issue,
You repine for a light of a tenderer kind—
And in choosing a substance for making a blind,
Do not sneeze at the paper call'd tissue.

For, subdued by the sheet so transparent and white,
Your design will appear in a soberer light,
And reveal its defects on inspection,
Just as Glory achieved, or political scheme,
And some more of our dazzling performances seem,
Not so bright on a cooler reflection.

So the juvenile Poet with ecstasy views
His first verses, and dreams that the songs of his Muse
Are as brilliant as Moore's and as tender—
Till some critical sheet scans the faulty design,
And alas! takes the shine out of every line
That had form'd such a vision of splendour;

Certain objects, however, may come in your sketch,
Which, design'd by a hand unaccustom'd to etch,

154

With a luckless result may be branded;
Wherefore add this particular rule to your code,
Let all vehicles take the wrong side of the road,
And man, woman, and child, be left-handed.

Yet regard not the awkward appearance with doubt,
But remember how often mere blessings fall out,
That at first seem'd no better than curses;
So, till things take a turn, live in hope, and depend
That whatever is wrong will come right in the end,
And console you for all your reverses.

But of errors why speak, when for beauty and truth
Your free, spirited Etching is worthy, in sooth,
Of that Club (may all honour betide it!)
Which, tho' dealing in copper, by genius and taste,
Has accomplish'd a service of plate not disgraced
By the work of a Goldsmith beside it!

So your sketch superficially drawn on the plate,
It becomes you to fix in a permanent state,
Which involves a precise operation,
With a keen biting fluid, which eating its way—
As in other professions is common they say—
Has attain'd an artistical station.

And it's, oh! that some splenetic folks I could name
If they must deal in acids would use but the same,
In such innocent graphical labours!
In the place of the virulent spirit wherewith—

155

Like the polecat, the weasel, and things of that kith—
They keep biting the backs of their neighbours!

But beforehand, with wax or the shoemaker's pitch,
You must build a neat dyke round the margin, in which
You may pour the dilute aquafortis.
For if raw like a dram, it will shock you to trace
Your design with a horrible froth on its face,
Like a wretch in articulo mortis.

Like a wretch in the pangs that too many endure
From the use of strong waters, without any pure,
A vile practice, most sad and improper!
For, from painful examples, this warning is found,
That the raw burning spirit will take up the ground,
In the churchyard, as well as on copper!

But the Acid has duly been lower'd, and bites
Only just where the visible metal invites,
Like a nature inclined to meet troubles;
And behold! as each slender and glittering line
Effervesces, you trace the completed design
In an elegant bead-work of bubbles!

And yet constantly secretly eating its way,
The shrewd acid is making the substance its prey,
Like some sorrow beyond inquisition,
Which is gnawing the heart and the brain all the while
That the face is illumed by its cheerfullest smile,
And the wit is in bright ebullition.

But still stealthily feeding, the treacherous stuff
Has corroded and deepen'd some portions enough—

156

The pure sky, and the water so placid—
And these tenderer tints to defend from attack,
With some turpentine varnish and sooty lamp-black
You must stop out the ferreting acid.

But before with the varnishing brush you proceed,
Let the plate with cold water be thoroughly freed
From the other less innocent liquor—
After which, on whatever you want to protect,
Put a coat that will act to that very effect,
Like the black one which hangs on the Vicar.

Then—the varnish well dried—urge the biting again,
But how long at its meal the eau forte may remain,
Time and practice alone can determine:
But of course not so long that the Mountain, and Mill,
The rude Bridge, and the Figures, whatever you will,
Are as black as the spots on your ermine.

It is true, none the less, that a dark-looking scrap,
With a sort of Blackheath, and Black Forest, mayhap,
Is consider'd as rather Rembrandty;
And that very black cattle and very black sheep,
A black dog, and a shepherd as black as a sweep,
Are the pets of some great Dilettante.

So with certain designers, one needs not to name,
All this life is a dark scene of sorrow and shame,
From our birth to our final adjourning—
Yea, this excellent earth and its glories, alack!
What with ravens, palls, cottons, and devils, as black
As a Warehouse for Family Mourning!

157

But before your own picture arrives at that pitch,
While the lights are still light, and the shadows, though rich,
More transparent than ebony shutters,
Never minding what Black-Arted critics may say,
Stop the biting, and pour the green fluid away,
As you please, into bottles or gutters.

Then removing the ground and the wax at a heat,
Cleanse the surface with oil, spermaceti or sweet,
For your hand a performance scarce proper—
So some careful professional person secure—
For the Laundress will not be a safe amateur—
To assist you in cleaning the copper.

And, in truth, 'tis rather an unpleasantish job,
To be done on a hot German stove, or a hob—
Though as sure of an instant forgetting,
When—as after the dark clearing-off of a storm—
The fair Landscape shines out in a lustre as warm
As the glow of the sun in its setting!

Thus your Etching complete, it remains but to hint,
That with certain assistance from paper and print,
Which the proper Mechanic will settle,
You may charm all your Friends—without any sad tale
Of such perils and ills as beset Lady Sale—
With a fine India Proof of your Metal.

158

SONNET.

[My heart is sick with longing, tho' I feed]

My heart is sick with longing, tho' I feed
On hope; Time goes with such a heavy pace
That neither brings nor takes from thy embrace,
As if he slept—forgetting his old speed:
For, as in sunshine only we can read
The march of minutes on the dial's face,
So in the shadows of this lonely place
There is no love, and Time is dead indeed.
But when, dear lady, I am near thy heart,
Thy smile is time, and then so swift it flies,
It seems we only meet to tear apart,
With aching hands and lingering of eyes.
Alas, alas! that we must learn hours' flight
By the same light of love that makes them bright!

A BLACK JOB.

“No doubt the pleasure is as great,
Of being cheated as to cheat.”
—Hudibras.

The history of human-kind to trace,
Since Eve—the first of dupes—our doom unriddled,
A certain portion of the human race
Has certainly a taste for being diddled.

Witness the famous Mississippi dreams!
A rage that time seems only to redouble—

159

The Banks, Joint-Stocks, and all the flimsy schemes,
For rolling in Pactolian streams,
That cost our modern rogues so little trouble.
No matter what,—to pasture cows on stubble,
To twist sea-sand into a solid rope,
To make French bricks and fancy bread of rubble,
Or light with gas the whole celestial cope—
Only propose to blow a bubble,
And Lord! what hundreds will subscribe for soap!

Soap!—it reminds me of a little tale,
Tho' not a pig's, the hawbuck's glory,
When rustic games and merriment prevail—
But here's my story:
Once on a time—no matter when—
A knot of very charitable men
Set up a Philantrophical Society,
Professing on a certain plan,
To benefit the race of man,
And in particular that dark variety,
Which some suppose inferior—as in vermin,
The sable is to ermine,
As smut to flour, as coal to alabaster,
As crows to swans, as soot to driven snow,
As blacking, or as ink to “milk below,”
Or yet a better simile, to show,
As ragman's dolls to images in plaster!

However, as is usual in our city,
They had a sort of managing Committee,
A board of grave responsible Directors—
A Secretary, good at pen and ink—
A Treasurer, of course, to keep the chink,

160

And quite an army of Collectors!
Not merely male, but female duns,
Young, old, and middle-aged—of all degrees—
With many of those persevering ones,
Who mite by mite would beg a cheese!

And what might be their aim?
To rescue Afric's sable sons from fetters—
To save their bodies from the burning shame
Of branding with hot letters—
Their shoulders from the cowhide's bloody strokes,
Their necks from iron yokes?
To end or mitigate the ills of slavery,
The Planter's avarice, the Driver's knavery?
To school the heathen Negroes and enlighten 'em,
To polish up and brighten 'em,
And make them worthy of eternal bliss?
Why, no—the simple end and aim was this—
Reading a well-known proverb much amiss—
To wash and whiten 'em!

They look'd so ugly in their sable hides:
So dark, so dingy, like a grubby lot
Of sooty sweeps, or colliers, and besides,
However the poor elves
Might wash themselves,
Nobody knew if they were clean or not—
On Nature's fairness they were quite a blot!
Not to forget more serious complaints
That even while they join'd in pious hymn,
So black they were and grim,
In face and limb,
They look'd like Devils, tho' they sang like Saints!

161

The thing was undeniable!
They wanted washing! not that slight ablution
To which the skin of the White Man is liable,
Merely removing transient pollution—
But good, hard, honest, energetic rubbing
And scrubbing,
Sousing each sooty frame from heels to head
With stiff, strong, saponaceous lather,
And pails of water—hottish rather,
But not so boiling as to turn 'em red!

So spoke the philanthropic man
Who laid, and hatch'd, and nursed the plan—
And oh! to view its glorious consummation!
The brooms and mops,
The tubs and slops,
The baths and brushes in full operation!
To see each Crow, or Jim, or John,
Go in a raven and come out a swan!
While fair as Cavendishes, Vanes, and Russels,
Black Venus rises from the soapy surge,
And all the little Niggerlings emerge
As lily-white as mussels.

Sweet was the vision—but alas!
However in prospectus bright and sunny,
To bring such visionary scenes to pass
One thing was requisite, and that was—money!
Money, that pays the laundress and her bills,
For socks and collars, shirts and frills,
Cravats and kerchiefs—money, without which
The negroes must remain as dark as pitch;

162

A thing to make all Christians sad and shivery,
To think of millions of immortal souls
Dwelling in bodies black as coals,
And living—so to speak—in Satan's livery!

Money—the root of evil,—dross, and stuff!
But oh! how happy ought the rich to feel,
Whose means enable them to give enough
To blanch an African from head to heel!
How blessed—yea, thrice blessed—to subscribe
Enough to scour a tribe!
While he whose fortune was at best a brittle one,
Although he gave but pence, how sweet to know
He helped to bleach a Hottentot's great toe,
Or little one!

Moved by this logic (or appall'd)
To persons of a certain turn so proper,
The money came when call'd,
In silver, gold, and copper,
Presents from “Friends to blacks,” or foes to whites,
“Trifles,” and “offerings,” and “widow's mites,”
Plump legacies, and yearly benefactions,
With other gifts
And charitable lifts,
Printed in lists and quarterly transactions.
As thus—Elisha Brettel,
An iron kettle.
The Dowager Lady Scannel,
A piece of flannel.
Rebecca Pope,
A bar of soap.

163

The Misses Howels,
Half-a-dozen towels.
The Master Rush's,
Two scrubbing-brushes.
Mr. T. Groom,
A stable broom,
And Mrs. Grubb,
A tub.

Great were the sums collected!
And great results in consequence expected.
But somehow, in the teeth of all endeavour,
According to reports
At yearly courts,
The blacks, confound them! were as black as ever!

Yes! spite of all the water sous'd aloft,
Soap, plain and mottled, hard and soft,
Soda and pearlash, huckaback and sand,
Brooms, brushes, palm of hand,
And scourers in the office strong and clever,
In spite of all the tubbing, rubbing, scrubbing,
The routing and the grubbing,
The blacks, confound them! were as black as ever!

In fact in his perennial speech,
The Chairman own'd the niggers did not bleach,
As he had hoped,
From being washed and soaped,
A circumstance he named with grief and pity;
But still he had the happiness to say,
For self and the Committee,
By persevering in the present way

164

And scrubbing at the Blacks from day to day,
Although he could not promise perfect white,
From certain symptoms that had come to light,
He hoped in time to get them gray!

Lull'd by this vague assurance,
The friends and patrons of the sable tribe
Continued to subscribe,
And waited, waited on with much endurance—
Many a frugal sister, thrifty daughter—
Many a stinted widow, pinching mother—
With income by the tax made somewhat shorter,
Still paid implicitly her crown per quarter,
Only to hear as ev'ry year came round,
That Mr. Treasurer had spent her pound;
And as she loved her sable brother,
That Mr. Treasurer must have another!

But, spite of pounds or guineas,
Instead of giving any hint
Of turning to a neutral tint,
The plaguy negroes and their piccaninnies
Were still the colour of the bird that caws—
Only some very aged souls
Showing a little gray upon their polls,
Like daws!

However, nothing dashed
By such repeated failures, or abashed,
The Court still met;—the Chairman and Directors,
The Secretary, good at pen and ink,
The worthy Treasurer, who kept the chink,
And all the cash Collectors;

165

With hundreds of that class, so kindly credulous,
Without whose help, no charlatan alive,
Or Bubble Company could hope to thrive,
Or busy Chevalier, however sedulous—
Those good and easy innocents in fact,
Who willingly receiving chaff for corn,
As pointed out by Butler's tact,
Still find a secret pleasure in the act
Of being pluck'd and shorn!

However, in long hundreds there they were,
Thronging the hot, and close, and dusty court,
To hear once more addresses from the Chair,
And regular Report.
Alas! concluding in the usual strain,
That what with everlasting wear and tear,
The scrubbing-brushes hadn't got a hair—
The brooms—mere stumps—would never serve again—
The soap was gone, the flannels all in shreds,
The towels worn to threads,
The tubs and pails too shatter'd to be mended—
And what was added with a deal of pain,
But as accounts correctly would explain,
Tho' thirty thousand pounds had been expended—
The Blackamoors had still been wash'd in vain!

“In fact, the negroes were as black as ink,
Yet, still as the Committee dared to think,
And hoped the proposition was not rash,
A rather free expenditure of cash—”
But ere the prospect could be made more sunny—
Up jump'd a little, lemon-coloured man,

166

And with an eager stammer, thus began,
In angry earnest, though it sounded funny:
“What! More subscriptions! No—no—no,—not I!
You have had time—time—time enough to try!
They won't come white! then why—why—why—why—why,
More money?”

“Why!” said the Chairman, with an accent bland,
And gentle waving of his dexter hand,
“Why must we have more dross, and dirt, and dust,
More filthy lucre, in a word, more gold—
The why, sir, very easily is told,
Because Humanity declares we must!
We've scrubb'd the negroes till we've nearly killed 'em,
And finding that we cannot wash them white,
But still their nigritude offends the sight,
We mean to gild 'em!”

297

ADDRESS.

Hush! not a sound! no whisper! no demur!
No restless motion—no intrusive stir!
But with staid presence and a quiet breath,
One solemn moment dedicate to Death!

[A pause.

For now no fancied miseries bespeak
The panting bosom, and the wetted cheek;
No fabled Tempest, or dramatic wreck,
No Royal Sire wash'd from the mimic deck,
And dirged by Sea Nymphs to his briny grave!
Alas! deep, deep beneath the sullen wave,
His heart, once warm and throbbing as your own,
Now cold and senseless as the shingle stone;
His lips, so eloquent, choked up with sand;
The bright eye glazed,—and the impressive hand,
Idly entangled with the ocean weed—
Full fathom five, a Father lies indeed!

Yes! where the foaming billows rave the while
Around the rocky Ferns and Holy Isle,
Deaf to their roar, as to the dear applause
That greets deserving in the Drama's cause,
Blind to the horrors that appal the bold,
To all he hoped, or feared, or loved, of old—
To love—and love's deep agony, a-cold;

298

He, who could move the passions, moved by none,
Drifts an unconscious corse.—Poor Elton's race is run!

Weep for the dead! Yet do not merely weep
For him who slumbers in the oozy deep:
Mourn for the dead!—yet not alone for him
O'er whom the cormorant and gannet swim;
But, like Grace Darling in her little boat,
Stretch out a saving hand to those that float—
The orphan Seven—so prematurely hurl'd
Upon the billows of this stormy world,
And struggling—save your pity take their part—
With breakers huge enough to break the heart!

YOUTH AND AGE.

Impatient of his childhood,
“Ah me!” exclaims young Arthur,
Whilst roving in the wild wood,
“I wish I were my father!”

Meanwhile, to see his Arthur
So skip, and play, and run,
“Ah me!” exclaims the father,
“I wish I were my son!”

299

TO HENRIETTA,

ON HER DEPARTURE FOR CALAIS.

When little people go abroad, wherever they may roam,
They will not just be treated as they used to be at home;
So take a few promiscuous hints, to warn you in advance,
Of how a little English girl will perhaps be served in France.

Of course you will be Frenchified; and first, it's my belief,
They'll dress you in their foreign style as à-la-mode as beef,
With a little row of beehives, as a border to your frock,
And a pair of frilly trousers, like a little bantam cock.

But first they'll seize your bundle (if you have one) in a crack,
And tie it with a tape by way of bustle on your back;
And make your waist so high or low, your shape will be a riddle,
For anyhow you'll never have your middle in the middle.

Your little English sandals for a while will hold together,
But woe betide you when the stones have worn away the leather;
For they'll poke your little pettitoes (and there will be a hobble!)
In such a pair of shoes as none but carpenters can cobble!

What next?—to fill your head with French to match the native girls
In scraps of Galignani they'll screw up your little curls;

300

And they'll take their nouns and verbs, and some bits of verse and prose,
And pour them in your ears that you may spout them through your nose.

You'll have to learn a chou is quite another sort of thing
To that you put your foot in; that a belle is not to ring;
That a corne is not the nubble that brings trouble to your toes;
Nor peut-être a potato, as some Irish folks suppose.

No, no, they have no murphies there, for supper or for lunch,
But you may get in course of time a pomme de terre to munch,
With which, as you perforce must do as Calais folks are doing,
You'll maybe have to gobble up the frog that went a wooing!

But pray at meals, remember this, the French are so polite,
No matter what you eat or drink, “whatever is, is right!”
So when you're told at dinner-time that some delicious stew
Is cat instead of rabbit, you must answer “Tant mi—eux!”

For little folks who go abroad, wherever they may roam,
They cannot just be treated as they used to be at home;
So take a few promiscuous hints, to warn you in advance,
Of how a little English girl will perhaps be served in France!

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A DROP OF GIN.

Gin! Gin! a drop of Gin!
What magnified monsters circle therein!
Ragged, and stained with filth and mud,
Some plague spotted, and some with blood!
Shapes of misery, shame, and sin!
Figures that make us loathe and tremble,
Creatures scarce human that more resemble
Broods of diabolical kin,
Ghost and vampyre, demon and Jin!

Gin! Gin! a drop of Gin!
The dram of Satan! the liquor of Sin!—
Distilled from the fell
Alembics of hell,
By Guilt, and Death,—his own brother and twin!—
That man might fall
Still lower than all
The meanest creatures with scale and fin.
But, hold;—we are neither Barebones nor Prynne,
Who lashed with such rage
The sins of the age;
Then, instead of making too much of a din,
Let Anger be mute,
And sweet Mercy dilute,
With a drop of pity, the drop of Gin!

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Gin! Gin! a drop of Gin!
When, darkly, Adversity's days set in,
And the friends and peers
Of earlier years
Prove warm without, but cold within,
And cannot retrace
A familiar face
That's steeped in poverty up to the chin;
But snub, neglect, cold-shoulder, and cut
The ragged pauper, misfortune's butt;
Hardly acknowledged by kith and kin,
Because, poor rat!
He has no cravat,
A seedy coat, and a hole in that!—
No sole to his shoe, and no brim to his hat;
Nor a change of linen—except his skin;
No gloves, no vest,
Either second or best;
And, what is worse than all the rest,
No light heart, though his trousers are thin—
While time elopes
With all golden hopes,
And even with those of pewter and tin;
The brightest dreams,
And the best of schemes,
All knocked down, like a wicket by Mynn.
Each castle in air
Seized by giant Despair,
No prospect in life worth a minnikin pin;
No credit, no cash,
No cold mutton to hash,
No bread—not even potatoes to mash;
No coal in the cellar, no wine in the binn—

307

Smashed, broken to bits,
With judgments and writs,
Bonds, bills, and cognovits distracting the wits,
In the webs that the spiders of Chancery spin—
Till, weary of life, its worry and strife,
Black visions are rife of a razor, a knife;
Of poison—a rope—“louping over a linn.”

Gin! Gin! a drop of Gin!
Oh! then its tremendous temptations begin,
To take, alas!
To the fatal glass;—
And happy the wretch that does not win
To change the black hue
Of his ruin to “blue”—
While angels sorrow, and demons grin—
And lose the rheumatic
Chill of his attic
By plunging into the Palace of Gin!

308

THE SONG OF THE SHIRT.

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread—
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
She sang the “Song of the Shirt.”

“Work! work! work!
While the cock is crowing aloof!
And work—work—work,
Till the stars shine through the roof!
It's Oh! to be a slave
Along with the barbarous Turk,
Where woman has never a soul to save,
If this is Christian work!

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“Work—work—work
Till the brain begins to swim;
Work—work—work
Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
Seam, and gusset, and band,
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Till over the buttons I fall asleep,
And sew them on in a dream!

“Oh, Men, with Sisters dear!
Oh, Men, with Mothers and Wives!
It is not linen you're wearing out,
But human creatures' lives!
Stitch—stitch—stitch,
In poverty, hunger and dirt,
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A Shroud as well as a Shirt.

“But why do I talk of Death?
That Phantom of grisly bone,
I hardly fear his terrible shape,
It seems so like my own—
It seems so like my own,
Because of the fasts I keep;
Oh, God! that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!

“Work—work—work!
My labour never flags;
And what are its wages? A bed of straw,
A crust of bread—and rags.

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That shatter'd roof—and this naked floor—
A table—a broken chair—
And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank
For sometimes falling there!

“Work—work—work!
From weary chime to chime,
Work—work—work—
As prisoners work for crime!
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Seam, and gusset, and band,
Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumb'd,
As well as the weary hand.

“Work—work—work,
In the dull December light,
And work—work—work,
When the weather is warm and bright—
While underneath the eaves
The brooding swallows cling
As if to show me their sunny backs
And twit me with the spring.

“Oh! but to breathe the breath
Of the cowslip and primrose sweet—
With the sky above my head,
And the grass beneath my feet,
For only one short hour
To feel as I used to feel,
Before I knew the woes of want
And the walk that costs a meal!

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“Oh! but for one short hour!
A respite however brief!
No blessed leisure for Love or Hope,
But only time for Grief!
A little weeping would ease my heart,
But in their briny bed
My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread!”

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread—
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,—
Would that its tone could reach the Rich!—
She sang this “Song of the Shirt!”

Seam, and gusset, and band,
Band, and gusset, and seam,
Work, work, work,
Like the Engine that works by Steam!
A mere machine of iron and wood,
That toils for Mammon's sake,
Without a brain to ponder and craze,
Or a heart to feel—and break!

[The following verse appears in the original MS. of “The Song of the Shirt.”]

312

THE PAUPER'S CHRISTMAS CAROL.

Full of drink and full of meat,
On our Saviour's natal day,
Charity's perennial treat;
Thus I heard a Pauper say:—
“Ought not I to dance and sing
Thus supplied with famous cheer?
Heigho!
I hardly know—
Christmas comes but once a year.

“After labour's long turmoil,
Sorry fare and frequent fast,
Two-and-fifty weeks of toil,
Pudding-time is come at last!
But are raisins high or low,
Flour and suet cheap or dear?
Heigho!
I hardly know—
Christmas comes but once a year,

“Fed upon the coarsest fare
Three hundred days and sixty-four
But for one on viands rare,
Just as if I wasn't poor!
Ought not I to bless my stars,
Warden, clerk, and overseer?
Heigho!

313

I hardly know—
Christmas comes but once a year.

“Treated like a welcome guest,
One of Nature's social chain,
Seated, tended on, and press'd—
But when shall I be press'd again,
Twice to pudding, thrice to beef,
A dozen times to ale and beer?
Heigho!
I hardly know—
Christmas comes but once a year.

“Come to-morrow how it will;
Diet scant and usage rough,
Hunger once has had its fill,
Thirst for once has had enough,
But shall I ever dine again?
Or see another feast appear?
Heigho!
I only know—
Christmas comes but once a year!

“Frozen cares begin to melt,
Hopes revive and spirits flow—
Feeling as I have not felt
Since a dozen months ago—
Glad enough to sing a song—
To-morrow shall I volunteer?
Heigho!
I hardly know—
Christmas comes but once a year.

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“Bright and blessed is the time,
Sorrows end and joys begin,
While the bells with merry chime
Ring the Day of Plenty in!
But the happy tide to hail,
With a sigh or with a tear,
Heigho!
I hardly know—
Christmas comes but once a year!”

315

1844.

320

THE HAUNTED HOUSE.

A ROMANCE.

“A jolly place, said he, in days of old,
But something ails it now: the spot is curst.”
Wordsworth.

PART I.

Some dreams we have are nothing else but dreams,
Unnatural, and full of contradictions;
Yet others of our most romantic schemes
Are something more than fictions.

321

It might be only on enchanted ground;
It might be merely by a thought's expansion;
But, in the spirit or the flesh, I found
An old deserted Mansion.

A residence for woman, child, and man,
A dwelling place,—and yet no habitation;
A House,—but under some prodigious ban
Of Excommunication.

Unhinged the iron gates half open hung,
Jarr'd by the gusty gales of many winters,
That from its crumbled pedestal had flung
One marble globe in splinters.

No dog was at the threshold, great or small;
No pigeon on the roof—no household creature—
No cat demurely dozing on the wall—
Not one domestic feature.

No human figure stirr'd, to go or come,
No face look'd forth from shut or open casement;
No chimney smoked—there was no sign of Home
From parapet to basement.

With shatter'd panes the grassy court was starr'd;
The time-worn coping-stone had tumbled after;
And thro' the ragged roof the sky shone, barr'd
With naked beam and rafter.

O'er all there hung a shadow and a fear;
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is Haunted!

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The flow'r grew wild and rankly as the weed,
Roses with thistles struggled for espial,
And vagrant plants of parasitic breed
Had overgrown the Dial.

But gay or gloomy, steadfast or infirm,
No heart was there to heed the hour's duration;
All times and tides were lost in one long term
Of stagnant desolation.

The wren had built within the Porch, she found
Its quiet loneliness so sure and thorough;
And on the lawn,—within its turfy mound,—
The rabbit made his burrow.

The rabbit wild and gray, that flitted thro'
The shrubby clumps, and frisk'd, and sat, and vanish'd,
But leisurely and bold, as if he knew
His enemy was banish'd.

The wary crow,—the pheasant from the woods—
Lull'd by the still and everlasting sameness,
Close to the mansion, like domestic broods,
Fed with a “shocking tameness.”

The coot was swimming in the reedy pond,
Beside the water-hen, so soon affrighted;
And in the weedy moat the heron, fond
Of solitude, alighted.

The moping heron, motionless and stiff,
That on a stone, as silently and stilly,
Stood, an apparent sentinel, as if
To guard the water-lily.

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No sound was heard except, from far away,
The ringing of the witwall's shrilly laughter,
Or, now and then, the chatter of the jay,
That Echo murmur'd after.

But Echo never mock'd the human tongue;
Some weighty crime, that Heaven could not pardon,
A secret curse on that old Building hung,
And its deserted Garden.

The beds were all untouch'd by hand or tool;
No footstep marked the damp and mossy gravel,
Each walk as green as is the mantled pool,
For want of human travel.

The vine unpruned, and the neglected peach,
Droop'd from the wall with which they used to grapple;
And on the canker'd tree, in easy reach,
Rotted the golden apple.

But awfully the truant shunn'd the ground,
The vagrant kept aloof, and daring Poacher;
In spite of gaps that thro' the fences round
Invited the encroacher.

For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is Haunted!

The pear and quince lay squander'd on the grass;
The mould was purple with unheeded showers
Of bloomy plums—a Wilderness it was
Of fruits, and weeds, and flowers!

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The marigold amidst the nettles blew,
The gourd embraced the rose bush in its ramble,
The thistle and the stock together grew,
The holly-hock and bramble.

The bear-bine with the lilac interlaced,
The sturdy bur-dock choked its slender neighbour,
The spicy pink. All tokens were effaced
Of human care and labour.

The very yew Formality had train'd
To such a rigid pyramidal stature,
For want of trimming had almost regain'd
The raggedness of nature.

The Fountain was a-dry—neglect and time
Had marr'd the work of artisan and mason,
And efts and croaking frogs, begot of slime,
Sprawl'd in the ruin'd bason.

The Statue, fallen from its marble base,
Amidst the refuse leaves, and herbage rotten,
Lay like the Idol of some by-gone race,
Its name and rites forgotten.

On ev'ry side the aspect was the same,
All ruin'd, desolate, forlorn, and savage:
No hand or foot within the precinct came
To rectify or ravage.

For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is Haunted!

325

PART II.

O, very gloomy is the House of Woe,
Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling,
With all the dark solemnities which show
That Death is in the dwelling!

O very, very dreary is the room
Where Love, domestic Love, no longer nestles,
But, smitten by the common stroke of doom,
The Corpse lies on the trestles!

But House of Woe, and hearse, and sable pall,
The narrow home of the departed mortal,
Ne'er look'd so gloomy as that Ghostly Hall,
With its deserted portal!

The centipede along the threshold crept,
The cobweb hung across in mazy tangle,
And in its winding-sheet the maggot slept,
At every nook and angle.

The keyhole lodged the earwig and her brood,
The emmets of the steps had old possession,
And march'd in search of their diurnal food
In undisturb'd procession.

As undisturb'd as the prehensile cell
Of moth or maggot, or the spider's tissue,
For never foot upon that threshold fell,
To enter or to issue.

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O'er all there hung the shadow of a fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is Haunted!

Howbeit, the door I push'd—or so I dream'd—
Which slowly, slowly gaped,—the hinges creaking
With such a rusty eloquence, it seem'd
That Time himself was speaking.

But Time was dumb within that Mansion old,
Or left his tale to the heraldic banners,
That hung from the corroded walls, and told
Of former men and manners:—

Those tatter'd flags, that with the open'd door,
Seem'd the old wave of battle to remember,
While fallen fragments danced upon the floor,
Like dead leaves in December.

The startled bats flew out,—bird after bird,—
The screech-owl overhead began to flutter,
And seem'd to mock the cry that she had heard
Some dying victim utter!

A shriek that echo'd from the joisted roof,
And up the stair, and further still and further,
Till in some ringing chamber far aloof
It ceased its tale of murther!

Meanwhile the rusty armour rattled round,
The banner shudder'd, and the ragged streamer;
All things the horrid tenor of the sound
Acknowledged with a tremor.

327

The antlers, where the helmet hung, and belt,
Stirr'd as the tempest stirs the forest branches,
Or as the stag had trembled when he felt
The blood-hound at his haunches.

The window jingled in its crumbled frame,
And thro' its many gaps of destitution
Dolorous moans and hollow sighings came,
Like those of dissolution.

The wood-louse dropped, and rolled into a ball,
Touch'd by some impulse occult or mechanic;
And nameless beetles ran along the wall
In universal panic.

The subtle spider, that from overhead
Hung like a spy on human guilt and error,
Suddenly turn'd, and up its slender thread
Ran with a nimble terror.

The very stains and fractures on the wall
Assuming features solemn and terrific,
Hinted some Tragedy of that old Hall,
Lock'd up in hieroglyphic.

Some tale that might, perchance, have solved the doubt,
Wherefore amongst those flags so dull and livid,
The banner of the Bloody Hand shone out
So ominously vivid.

Some key to that inscrutable appeal,
Which made the very frame of Nature quiver;
And ev'ry thrilling nerve and fibre feel
So ague-like a shiver.

328

For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted;
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is Haunted!

If but a rat had linger'd in the house,
To lure the thought into a social channel!
But not a rat remain'd, or tiny mouse,
To squeak behind the panel.

Huge drops roll'd down the walls, as if they wept;
And where the cricket used to chirp so shrilly,
The toad was squatting, and the lizard crept
On that damp hearth and chilly.

For years no cheerful blaze had sparkled there,
Or glanced on coat of buff or knightly metal;
The slug was crawling on the vacant chair,—
The snail upon the settle.

The floor was redolent of mould and must,
The fungus in the rotten seams had quicken'd;
While on the oaken table coats of dust
Perenially had thicken'd.

No mark of leathern jack or metal can,
No cup—no horn—no hospitable token,—
All social ties between that board and Man
Had long ago been broken.

There was so foul a rumour in the air,
The shadow of a Presence so atrocious;
No human creature could have feasted there,
Even the most ferocious.

329

For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is Haunted!

PART III.

'Tis hard for human actions to account,
Whether from reason or from impulse only—
But some internal prompting bade me mount
The gloomy stairs and lonely.

Those gloomy stairs, so dark, and damp, and cold,
With odours as from bones and relics carnal,
Deprived of rite, and consecrated mould,
The chapel vault, or charnel.

Those dreary stairs, where with the sounding stress
Of ev'ry step so many echoes blended,
The mind, with dark misgivings, fear'd to guess
How many feet ascended.

The tempest with its spoils had drifted in,
Till each unwholesome stone was darkly spotted,
As thickly as the leopard's dappled skin,
With leaves that rankly rotted.

The air was thick—and in the upper gloom
The bat—or something in its shape—was winging;
And on the wall, as chilly as a tomb,
The Death's-Head moth was clinging.

330

That mystic moth, which, with a sense profound
Of all unholy presence, augurs truly;
And with a grim significance flits round
The taper burning bluely.

Such omens in the place there seem'd to be,
At ev'ry crooked turn, or on the landing,
The straining eyeball was prepared to see
Some Apparition standing.

For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is Haunted!

Yet no portentous Shape the sight amazed;
Each object plain, and tangible, and valid;
But from their tarnish'd frames dark Figures gazed,
And Faces spectre-pallid.

Not merely with the mimic life that lies
Within the compass of Art's simulation;
Their souls were looking thro' their painted eyes
With awful speculation.

On ev'ry lip a speechless horror dwelt;
On ev'ry brow the burthen of affliction;
The old Ancestral Spirits knew and felt
The House's malediction.

Such earnest woe their features overcast,
They might have stirr'd, or sigh'd, or wept, or spoken;
But, save the hollow moaning of the blast,
The stillness was unbroken.

331

No other sound or stir of life was there,
Except my steps in solitary clamber,
From flight to flight, from humid stair to stair,
From chamber into chamber.

Deserted rooms of luxury and state,
That old magnificence had richly furnish'd
With pictures, cabinets of ancient date,
And carvings gilt and burnish'd.

Rich hangings, storied by the needle's art
With scripture history, or classic fable;
But all had faded, save one ragged part,
Where Cain was slaying Abel.

The silent waste of mildew and the moth
Had marr'd the tissue with a partial ravage;
But undecaying frown'd upon the cloth
Each feature stern and savage.

The sky was pale; the cloud a thing of doubt;
Some hues were fresh, and some decay'd and duller;
But still the BLOODY HAND shone strangely out
With vehemence of colour!

The BLOODY HAND that with a lurid stain
Shone on the dusty floor, a dismal token,
Projected from the casement's painted pane,
Where all beside was broken.

The BLOODY HAND significant of crime,
That glaring on the old heraldic banner,
Had kept its crimson unimpair'd by time,
In such a wondrous manner!

332

O'er all there hung the shadow of a fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is Haunted!

The Death Watch tick'd behind the panel'd oak,
Inexplicable tremors shook the arras,
And echoes strange and mystical awoke,
The fancy to embarrass.

Prophetic hints that filled the soul with dread,
But thro' one gloomy entrance pointing mostly,
The while some secret inspiration said,
That Chamber is the Ghostly!

Across the door no gossamer festoon
Swung pendulous—no web—no dusty fringes,
No silky chrysalis or white cocoon
About its nooks and hinges.

The spider shunn'd the interdicted room,
The moth, the beetle, and the fly were banish'd,
And where the sunbeam fell athwart the gloom
The very midge had vanish'd.

One lonely ray that glanced upon a Bed,
As if with awful aim direct and certain,
To show the Bloody Hand in burning red
Embroider'd on the curtain.

And yet no gory stain was on the quilt—
The pillow in its place had slowly rotted;
The floor alone retain'd the trace of guilt,
Those boards obscurely spotted.

333

Obscurely spotted to the door, and thence
With mazy doubles to the grated casement—
Oh what a tale they told of fear intense,
Of horror and amazement!

What human creature in the dead of night
Had coursed like hunted hare that cruel distance?
Had sought the door, the window in his flight,
Striving for dear existence?

What shrieking Spirit in that bloody room
Its mortal frame had violently quitted?—
Across the sunbeam, with a sudden gloom,
A ghostly Shadow flitted.

Across the sunbeam, and along the wall,
But painted on the air so very dimly,
It hardly veil'd the tapestry at all,
Or portrait frowning grimly.

O'er all there hung the shadow of a fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is Haunted!

A TALE OF TEMPER.

Of all cross breeds of human sinners,
The crabbedest are those who dress our dinners;
Whether the ardent fires at which they roast
And broil and bake themselves like Smithfield martyrs,

334

Are apt to make them crusty, like a toast,
Or drams, encouraged by so hot a post;
However, cooks are generally Tartars;
And altogether might be safely cluster'd
In scientific catalogues
Under two names, like Dinmont's dogs,
Pepper and Mustard.

The case thus being very common,
It followed, quite of course, when Mr. Jervis
Engaged a clever culinary woman,
He took a mere Xantippe in his service—
In fact—her metal not to burnish,
As vile a shrew as Shrewsbury could furnish—
One who in temper, language, manners, looks,
In every respect
Might just have come direct
From him, who is supposed to send us cooks.

The very day she came into her place
She slapp'd the scullion's face;
The next, the housemaid being rather pert,
Snatching the broom, she “treated her like dirt’—
The third, a quarrel with the groom she hit on—
Cyrus, the page, had half-a-dozen knocks;
And John, the coachman, got a box
He couldn't sit on.

Meanwhile, her strength to rally,
Brandy, and rum, and shrub she drank by stealth,
Besides the Cream of some mysterious Valley
That may, or may not, be the Vale of Health:
At least while credit lasted, or her wealth—

335

For finding that her blows came only thicker,
Invectives and foul names but flew the quicker,
The more she drank, the more inclined to bicker,
The other servants, one and all,
Took Bible oaths whatever might befal,
Neither to lend her cash, nor fetch her liquor!

This caused, of course, a dreadful schism,
And what was worse, in spite of all endeavour,
After a fortnight of Tea-totalism,
The Plague broke out more virulent than ever!
The life she led her fellows down the stairs!
The life she led her betters in the parlour!
No parrot ever gave herself such airs,
No pug-dog cynical was such a snarler!
At woman, man, and child, she flew and snapp'd,
No rattlesnake on earth so fierce and rancorous—
No household cat that ever lapp'd
To swear and spit was half so apt—
No bear, sore-headed, could be more cantankerous—
No fretful porcupine more sharp and crabbed—
No wolverine
More full of spleen—
In short, the woman was completely rabid!

The least offence of look or phrase,
The slightest verbal joke, the merest frolic,
Like a snap-dragon set her in a blaze,
Her spirit was so alcoholic!
And woe to him who felt her tongue!
It burnt like caustic—like a nettle stung,
Her speech was scalding—scorching—vitriolic!

336

And larded, not with bacon fat,
Or anything so mild as that,
But curses so intensely diabolic,
So broiling hot, that he, at whom she levell'd,
Felt in his very gizzard he was devill'd!

Often and often Mr. Jervis
Long'd, and yet feared, to turn her from his service;
For why? Of all his philosophic loads
Of reptiles loathsome, spiteful, and pernicious,
Stuff'd Lizards, bottled Snakes, and pickled Toads,
Potted Tarantulas, and Asps malicious,
And Scorpions cured by scientific modes,
He had not any creature half so vicious!

At last one morning
The coachman had already given warning,
And little Cyrus
Was gravely thinking of a new cockade,
For open War's rough sanguinary trade,
Or any other service, quite desirous,
Instead of quarrelling with such a jade—
When accident explain'd the coil she made,
And whence her Temper had derived the virus!

Struck with the fever, called the scarlet,
The Termagant was lying sick in bed—
And little Cyrus, that precocious varlet,
Was just declaring her “as good as dead,”
When down the attic stairs the housemaid, Charlotte,
Came running from the chamber overhead,

337

Like one demented;
Flapping her hands, and casting up her eyes,
And giving gasps of horror and surprise,
Which thus she vented—
“O Lord! I wonder that she didn't bite us!
Or sting us like a Tantalizer,
(The note will make the Reader wiser,)
And set us all a dancing like St. Witus!

“Temper! No wonder that the creatur had
A temper so uncommon bad!
She's just confess'd to Doctor Griper
That being out of Rum, and like denials,—
Which always was prodigious trials,—
Because she couldn't pay the piper,
She went one day, she did, to Master's wials,
And drunk the spirit as preserved the Wiper!”

391

A SONG FOR THE MILLION.

ON WILHELM'S METHOD.

There's a Music aloft in the air
As if Cherubs were humming a song,
Now it's high, now it's low, here and there,
There's a Harmony floating along!
While the steeples are loud in their joy,
To the tune of the bells' ring-a-ding,
Let us chime in a peal, one and all,
For we all should be able to sing
Hullahbaloo!

We are Chartists, Destructives and rogues,
We are Radicals, Tories, and Whigs,
We are Churchmen, Dissenters, what not,
We are asses, curs, monkeys and pigs,
But in spite of the slanderous names
Partisans on each other will fling.
Tho' in concord we cannot agree,
Yet we all in a chorus may sing
Hullahbaloo!

392

We may not have a happy New Year,
Be perplex'd by all possible ills—
Find the bread and the meat very dear,
And be troubled with very hard bills—
Yet like linnets, cock-robins and wrens,
Larks, and nightingales joyous in Spring,
Or the finches saluting their hens,
Sure we all should be able to sing
Hullahbaloo!

We may have but a Lilliput purse,
And the change in the purse very small,
And our notes may not pass at the Bank,
But they're current at Exeter Hall!
Then a fig for foul weather and fogs!
And whatever Misfortune may bring,
If we go to the dogs—like the dogs
In a pack we are able to sing
Hullahbaloo!

Though the coat may be worn with a badge—
Or the kerchief no prize for a prig—
Or the shirt never sent to the wash—
There's the Gamut for little and big!
O then come, rich and poor, young and old,
For of course it's a very fine thing,
Spite of Misery, Hunger, and cold,
That we all are so able to sing
Hullahbaloo!

There are Demons to worry the rich,
There are monsters to torture the poor,

393

There's the Worm that will gnaw at the heart,
There's the Wolf that will come to the door!
We may even be short of the cash
For the tax to a queen or a king,
And the broker may sell off our beds,
But we still shall be able to sing
Hullahbaloo!

There's Consumption to wither the weak,
There are fevers that humble the stout—
A disease may be rife with the young,
Or a pestilence walking about—
Desolation may visit our hives,
And old Death's metaphorical sting
May dispose of the dearest of wives,
But we all shall be able to sing
Hullahbaloo!

We may farm at a very high rent,
And with guano manure an inch deep,
We may sow, whether broadcast or drill,
And have only the whirlwind to reap;
All our corn may be spoil'd in the ear,
And our barns be ignited by Swing,
And our sheep may die off with the rot,
But we all shall be able to sing
Hullahbaloo!

Our acquaintance may cut us direct,
Even Love may become rather cold,
And a friend of our earlier years
May look shy at the coat that is old:

394

We may not have a twig or a straw,
Not a reed where affection may cling,
Not a dog for our love, or a cat,
But we still shall be able to sing,
Hullahbaloo!

Some are pallid with watching and want,
Some are burning with blushes of shame;
Some have lost all they had in the world,
And are bankrupts in honour and name.
Some have wasted a fortune in trade—
And by going at all in the ring,
Some have lost e'en a voice in the House;
But they all will be able to sing
Hullahbaloo!

Some are deep in the Slough of Despond,
And so sick of the burthen of life,
That they dream of leaps over a bridge,
Of the pistol, rope, poison and knife;
To the Temples of Riches and Fame
We are not going up in a string;
And to some even Heaven seems black,
But we all shall be able to sing
Hullahbaloo!

We may give up the struggle with Care,
And the last little hope that would stop,
We may strive with a Giant Despair—
From the very blue sky we may drop,
By some sudden bewildering blow
Stricken down like a bird on the wing,—

395

Or with hearts breaking surely and slow—
But we all shall be able to sing
Hullahbaloo!

Oh! no matter how wretched we be,
How ill-lodg'd, or ill-clad, or ill-fed,
And with only one tile for a roof,—
That we carry about on the head:
We may croak with a very bad cold,
Or a throat that's as dry as a ling,—
There's the Street or the Stage for us all,
For we all shall be able to sing
Hullahbaloo!

There's a Music aloft in the air,
As if Cherubs were humming a song,
Now it's high, now it's low, here and there,
There's a Harmony floating along!
While the steeples are loud in their joy,
To the tune of the bells' ring-a-ding,
Let us chime in a peal, one and all,
For we all should be able to sing
Hullahbaloo!

EPIGRAM ON THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE STATUES IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE.

If Nelson looks down on a couple of Kings,
However it pleases the Loyals;
'Tis after the fashion of nautical things,
A sky-scraper over the Royals.

421

THE MARY.

A SEA-SIDE SKETCH.

Lov'st thou not, Alice, with the early tide
To see the hardy Fisher hoist his mast,
And stretch his sail towards the ocean wide,—
Like God's own beadsman going forth to cast
His net into the deep, which doth provide
Enormous bounties, hidden in its vast
Bosom like Charity's, for all who seek
And take its gracious boon thankful and meek?

The sea is bright with morning,—but the dark
Seems still to linger on his broad black sail,
For it is early hoisted, like a mark
For the low sun to shoot at with his pale
And level beams: All round the shadowy bark
The green wave glimmers, and the gentle gale
Swells in her canvas, till the waters show
The keel's new speed, and whiten at the bow.

Then look abaft—(for thou canst understand
That phrase)—and there he sitteth at the stern,
Grasping the tiller in his broad brown hand,
The hardy Fisherman. Thou may'st discern
Ten fathoms off the wrinkles in the tann'd
And honest countenance that he will turn
To look upon us, with a quiet gaze—
As we are passing on our several ways.

422

So, some ten days ago, on such a morn,
The Mary, like a seamew, sought her spoil
Amongst the finny race: 'twas when the corn
Woo'd the sharp sickle, and the golden toil
Summon'd all rustic hands to fill the horn
Of Ceres to the brim, that brave turmoil
Was at the prime, and Woodgate went to reap
His harvest too, upon the broad blue deep.

His mast was up, his anchor heaved aboard,
His mainsail stretching in the first gray gleams
Of morning, for the wind. Ben's eye was stored
With fishes—fishes swam in all his dreams,
And all the goodly east seem'd but a hoard
Of silvery fishes, that in shoals and streams
Groped into the deep dusk that fill'd the sky,
For him to catch in meshes of his eye.

For Ben had the true sailor's sanguine heart,
And saw the future with a boy's brave thought,
No doubts, nor faint misgivings had a part
In his bright visions—ay, before he caught
His fish, he sold them in the scaly mart,
And summ'd the net proceeds. This should have brought
Despair upon him when his hopes were foil'd,
But though one crop was marr'd, again he toil'd

And sow'd his seed afresh.—Many foul blights
Perish'd his hardwon gains—yet he had plann'd
No schemes of too extravagant delights—
No goodly houses on the Goodwin sand—
But a small humble home, and loving nights,
Such as his honest heart and earnest hand

423

Might fairly purchase. Were these hopes too airy?
Such as they were, they rested on thee, Mary.

She was the prize of many a toilsome year,
And hardwon wages, on the perilous sea—
Of savings ever since the shipboy's tear
Was shed for home, that lay beyond the lee;—
She was purveyor for his other dear
Mary, and for the infant yet to be
Fruit of their married loves. These made him dote
Upon the homely beauties of his boat,

Whose pitch black hull roll'd darkly on the wave,
No gayer than one single stripe of blue
Could make her swarthy sides. She seem'd a slave,
A negro among boats—that only knew
Hardship and rugged toil—no pennons brave
Flaunted upon the mast—but oft a few
Dark dripping jackets flutter'd to the air,
Ensigns of hardihood and toilsome care.

And when she ventured for the deep, she spread
A tawny sail against the sunbright sky,
Dark as a cloud that journeys overhead—
But then those tawny wings were stretch'd to fly
Across the wide sea desert for the bread
Of babes and mothers—many an anxious eye
Dwelt on her course, and many a fervent pray'r
Invoked the Heavens to protect and spare.

Where is she now? The secrets of the deep
Are dark and hidden from the human ken;

424

Only the sea-bird saw the surges sweep
Over the bark of the devoted Ben,—
Meanwhile a widow sobs and orphans weep,
And sighs are heard from weatherbeaten men,
Dark sunburnt men, uncouth and rude and hairy,
While loungers idly ask, “Where is the Mary?”

A DISCOVERY IN ASTRONOMY.

One day—I had it from a hasty mouth
Accustom'd to make many blunders daily,
And therefore will not name, precisely, South,
Herschell, or Baily—
But one of those great men who watch the skies,
With all their rolling, winking eyes,
Was looking at that Orb whose ancient God
Was patron of the Ode, and Song, and Sonnet,
When thus he musing cried—“It's very odd
That no Astronomer of all the squad
Can tell the nature of those spots upon it!”

“Lord, master!” mutter'd John, a liveried elf,
“To wonder so at spots upon the sun!
I'll tell you what he's done—
Freckled hisself!”

426

THE LADY'S DREAM.

The lady lay in her bed,
Her couch so warm and soft,
But her sleep was restless and broken still;
For turning often and oft
From side to side, she mutter'd and moan'd,
And toss'd her arms aloft.

At last she startled up,
And gazed on the vacant air,
With a look of awe, as if she saw
Some dreadful phantom there—
And then in the pillow she buried her face
From visions ill to bear.

The very curtain shook,
Her terror was so extreme;
And the light that fell on the broider'd quilt
Kept a tremulous gleam;
And her voice was hollow, and shook as she cried:—
“Oh me! that awful dream!

427

“That weary, weary walk,
In the churchyard's dismal ground!
And those horrible things, with shady wings,
That came and flitted round,—
Death, death, and nothing but death,
In every sight and sound!

“And oh! those maidens young,
Who wrought in that dreary room,
With figures drooping and spectres thin,
And cheeks without a bloom;—
And the Voice that cried, ‘For the pomp of pride,
We haste to an early tomb!

“‘For the pomp and pleasure of Pride,
We toil like Afric slaves,
And only to earn a home at last,
Where yonder cypress waves;’—
And then they pointed—I never saw
A ground so full of graves!

“And still the coffins came,
With their sorrowful trains and slow;
Coffin after coffin still,
A sad and sickening show;
From grief exempt, I never had dreamt
Of such a World of Woe!

“Of the hearts that daily break,
Of the tears that hourly fall,
Of the many, many troubles of life,
That grieve this earthly ball—
Disease and Hunger, and Pain, and Want,
But now I dreamt of them all!

428

“For the blind and the cripple were there,
And the babe that pined for bread,
And the houseless man, and the widow poor
Who begged—to bury the dead;
The naked, alas, that I might have clad,
The famish'd I might have fed!

“The sorrow I might have sooth'd,
And the unregarded tears;
For many a thronging shape was there,
From long forgotten years,
Aye, even the poor rejected Moor,
Who raised my childish fears!

“Each pleading look, that long ago
I scann'd with a heedless eye,
Each face was gazing as plainly there,
As when I pass'd it by:
Woe, woe for me if the past should be
Thus present when I die!

“No need of sulphurous lake,
No need of fiery coal,
But only that crowd of human kind
Who wanted pity and dole—
In everlasting retrospect—
Will wring my sinful soul!

“Alas! I have walk'd through life
Too heedless where I trod;
Nay, helping to trample my fellow worm,
And fill the burial sod—
Forgetting that even the sparrow falls
Not unmark'd of God!

429

“I drank the richest draughts;
And ate whatever is good—
Fish, and flesh, and fowl, and fruit,
Supplied my hungry mood;
But I never remember'd the wretched ones
That starve for want of food!

“I dress'd as the noble dress,
In cloth of silver and gold,
With silk, and satin, and costly furs,
In many an ample fold;
But I never remember'd the naked limbs
That froze with winter's cold.

“The wounds I might have heal'd!
The human sorrow and smart!
And yet it never was in my soul
To play so ill a part:
But evil is wrought by want of Thought,
As well as want of Heart!”

She clasp'd her fervent hands,
And the tears began to stream;
Large, and bitter, and fast they fell,
Remorse was so extreme:
And yet, oh yet, that many a Dame
Would dream the Lady's Dream!