 | Songs and Poems from 1819 to 1879 |  |
98
PROLOGUE TO “VALENTINE AND ORSON.”
From a gay woodcut—no dull tract with trees on,Behold me here! “The Lion of the Season,”
Mr. Gorilla! I announce myself,
For the stage-door keeper, poor timid elf,
Soon as he saw me in the distance dim,
Bolted!—no doubt for fear I should bolt him.
His fear was groundless. Really I am not
The great gorilla Monsieur Chaillu shot.
That monster, about whom there's so much jaw,
Must be the perfect one the world ne'er saw;
Nor am I e'en like those whose bones you see,
But débonnaire, and full of bonhommie.
In short, of Mr. Punch's own creation,
Proof of his power of investigation;
Cut off on wood myself, to aid I came
The orphans of a woodcutter of fame.
Stern fate has left them few sticks and small stock,
We trust to save some chips of the old block!
99
Of whom the town before have felt the ravages,
Have formed a club, with which they take great pains,
For their poor friends to cudgel their own brains!
From this you might suppose, no brains they've got,
But you'd be wrong, for they've dashed out a lot,
On paper, which is now from duty free,
In hopes to pay the widow's tax on tea,
The times and their intents are savage, wild,
They've seized upon the story of a child;
Torn it piecemeal, mangled its mother's tongue,
Excruciating puns from out it wrung;
And are exulting in the hope soon after
To feast upon your groans and shrieks of laughter.
Well, what from savages can you expect?
Yet glimmerings of sense you may detect.
There's method in their madness, much barbarity
Is oft enacted in the name of Charity;
While, on the other hand, we sometimes find,
We “must be cruel only to be kind.”
And now, perhaps, you may begin to see,
To speak the prologue, why they fixed on me;
I'm thought a link, though some the fact dispute,
Between the “genus homo” and the brute,
Something that was, ere peg-tops made the man,
Or “wild in woods the lordly savage ran.”
Now granting that in war all weapons are fair,
Particularly in gorilla warfare;
100
Or standing on the matter shilly-Chaillu,
Whether I'm both at once, or one, or t'other,
Say, “Am not I a savage and a brother?”
Do not I bear in this especial case
A stròng resemblance to the human race?
Then let me hope, with pardonable vanity,
To prove a link 'twixt our and your humanity.
In brief—for sure I need no longer pause—
In your good-will let me insert my claws;
Spare not, I pray, your purses or your palms,
The actors crave your hands, the fatherless your alms.
| Songs and Poems from 1819 to 1879 | |