The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Up!” said the Spirit, and, ere I could pray
One hasty orison, whirl'd me away
To a Limbo, lying—I wist not where—
Above or below, in earth or air;
For it glimmer'd o'er with a doubtful light,
One couldn't say whether 'twas day or night;
And 'twas crost by many a mazy track,
One didn't know how to get on or back;
And I felt like a needle that's going astray
(With its one eye out) through a bundle of hay;
When the Spirit he grinn'd, and whisper'd me,
“Thou'rt now in the Court of Chancery!”

Around me flitted unnumber'd swarms
Of shapeless, bodiless, tailless forms;
(Like bottled-up babes, that grace the room
Of that worthy knight, Sir Everard Home)—

194

All of them, things half-kill'd in rearing;
Some were lame—some wanted hearing;
Some had through half a century run,
Though they hadn't a leg to stand upon.
Others, more merry, as just beginning,
Around on a point of law were spinning;
Or balanc'd aloft, 'twixt Bill and Answer,
Lead at each end, like a tight-rope dancer.
Some were so cross, that nothing could please 'em;—
Some gulp'd down affidavits to ease 'em;—
All were in motion, yet never a one,
Let it move as it might, could ever move on.
“These,” said the Spirit, “you plainly see,
“Are what they call suits in Chancery!”

I heard a loud screaming of old and young,
Like a chorus by fifty Vellutis sung;
Or an Irish Dump (“the words by Moore”)
At an amateur concert scream'd in score;—
So harsh on my ear that wailing fell
Of the wretches who in this Limbo dwell!
It seem'd like the dismal symphony
Of the shapes Æneas in hell did see;

195

Or those frogs, whose legs a barbarous cook
Cut off, and left the frogs in the brook,
To cry all night, till life's last dregs,
“Give us our legs!—give us our legs!”
Touch'd with the sad and sorrowful scene,
I ask'd what all this yell might mean,
When the Spirit replied, with a grin of glee,
“'Tis the cry of the Suitors in Chancery!”

I look'd, and I saw a wizard rise,
With a wig like a cloud before men's eyes.
In his aged hand he held a wand,
Wherewith he beckon'd his embryo band,
And they mov'd and mov'd, as he wav'd it o'er,
But they never got on one inch the more.
And still they kept limping to and fro,
Like Ariels round old Prospero—
Saying, “Dear Master, let us go,”
But still old Prospero answer'd “No.”
And I heard, the while, that wizard elf
Muttering, muttering spells to himself,

196

While o'er as many old papers he turn'd,
As Hume e'er mov'd for, or Omar burn'd.
He talk'd of his virtue—“though some, less nice,
(He own'd with a sigh) preferr'd his Vice”—
And he said, “I think”—“I doubt”—“I hope,”
Call'd God to witness, and damn'd the Pope;
With many more sleights of tongue and hand
I couldn't, for the soul of me, understand.
Amaz'd and pos'd, I was just about
To ask his name, when the screams without,
The merciless clack of the imps within,
And that conjuror's mutterings, made such a din,
That, startled, I woke—leap'd up in my bed—
Found the Spirit, the imps, and the conjuror fled,
And bless'd my stars, right pleas'd to see,
That I wasn't, as yet, in Chancery.

The Lord Chancellor Eld---n.