University of Virginia Library

This evening hour which grateful memory spares
From evening toil and unrequited cares;
These curling lips, these joy revealing eyes,
These mirthful tones, re-echoing as they rise,
These friendly pledges on this festal shrine,
The glistening goblet and the flowing wine,
This genial influence which the coldest heart
Warms to receive and opens to impart,
Mock the poor Art who does her subjects wrong
And steals from Pleasure all she wastes in Song.
Yet since you ask this feeble hand to strew
Wreathes on the flowers and diamonds on the snow,
Take all it bears, and if the gift offend,
Condemn the Poet—spare! oh! spare the friend!

Yes, while I speak, some magic wand appears
Shapes the long past, oh! say not happier years,
The lawless fancies, yet untaught to know
The charms of reason, or the scourge of woe;
The boyish dreams now melting into air;
The virgin forms, alas! no longer fair;
The scattered friends, with many a tear resigned,
Once all our own, now mingled with mankind;
Since, save in memory, ye appear no more
In the bright present, let the Past live o'er.
Still in the heart, some lingering spark remains—
You cannot chase it from the shrinking veins.
Grief comes too early; Pleasure ne'er too late.
Snatch the fair blossom, whatsoe'er its date;
If youth still charms thee, mirth is justly thine;
If age has chilled thee, lo!—the generous wine!

Oh! thoughtless revellers! when you set my task,
How little dreamed you of the toil you asked.
How shall I please you?—I, a grave young man,
Whose fate is drudgery on “the useful plan.”
How can I coax you, smooth you, comb you down,
And cheat your frontals of that awful frown—
Portentous scowl! which marks in every age
The blistering, clystering, tooth-extracting sage?
A verse too polished will not stick at all;
The worst back scratcher is a billiard ball.
A rhyme too rugged would not hit the point,
Its loose legs wriggling in and out of joint.
Shall I be serious, touching, lachrymose;
Mix tears with wine and give you all a dose?
But well-filled stomachs have not room for grief,
For sips and sighs, for porter and roast beef.
Shall I be learned, and with punch and claw,
Dig stumps of Greek from every Ancient's jaw?
But who quotes Cuvier when he feasts on snipe,
Or reads Gastritis when his wife cooks tripe?
Not all the wisdom of recorded time
Can change one titbit to concocted chyme.
Not all the schools from Berkshire to the Nile
Can melt one sausage into milky chyle.
Nor all the Galens since Deucalion's flood
Change lifeless pudding into living blood.

Then Heavenly Muse, avert thy rolling eyes,
Lest in their sight unlicked creations rise;
Or should those linger in the wanton air,
Pull off thy girdle and unbind thy hair;
Come not like Juno to such scenes as this;
Too proud to play with, and too prim to kiss;
But wild and careless as some slip-shod maid,
Oh! classic Broad street, in thy fragrant shade,
With braidless ringlets, tangled, tumbling down,
And blue-veined bosom gleaming through her gown,
And all the lovelier for a casual streak
Of smutty semblance in her damask cheek;
Nor over conscious should her flounces fly
To Love's half tide-mark, when his waves are high.

Our noble Art, what countless shoals invade,
Some as a science, many as a trade.
In every column quackery has its line;
From every corner stares the Doctor's sign;
From every shore the straining vessel tugs
Ill-scented balsams, stomach turning drugs.
The keels of commerce clear the farthest surge,
Lest some old beldam want her morning purge.
The seaman wanders on his venturous route
To turn a baby's stomach inside out.
Rich were the Queen of yon hepatic isle
With half her subjects squander on their bile;
Rich were Van Buren, could he pay his bills
With half his people waste on Brandreth's pills,
Or with their products fill his farmers' carts
With tare and tret for reproductive parts.

If one great truth defies the skeptic's scorn
That truth is this—that children must be born;
If one great maxim, man dare not deny,
That maxim is—that mortal man must die.
If long experience be not all a trick,
Who dares to say that mortals can't be sick?
These solemn truths, by thinking minds allowed,
Lift the stern reasoner above the vulgar crowd.
From every truth some vast conclusion flows—
Truth is the pump, and reason is its nose;
Its handle, logic; work it, and it brings
Transcendent streams from transcendental springs.

Heaven surely ordered on Creation's morn
This mighty law—that children must be born.
Hence came the science, thou dost show so well
With white fore finger—Madame Lachapelle;
Hence came the forceps, hence the screw to pinch
The soul's own viscus to half an inch;
Hence came the weapons, which the embryos bore
Left in the lurch, their brains escaped before,—
A trivial damage, since so oft we find
That babes grow up, who left their brains behind—
Hence came the fillet, whence the infant wretch
Mistakes the midwife for her friend Jack Ketch;
Hence came the lever, which the toothless fry
Take for a crowbar, when the monsters pry;
Hence the scooped pinchers, with the fangs between,
Skull-crushing Davis—thy divine machine—
Hence all the “claptraps,” potent to extract
The hero struggling in his closing act.

So the stout foetus, kicking and alive
Leaps from the fundus for his final dive;
Tired of the prison where his legs were curled,
He pants like Rasselas for a wider world.
No more to him their wonted joys afford
The fringed placenta and the knotted cord;
No longer liberal of his filial thanks,
He drums his minuets on his mother's flanks;
But nobly daring, seeks the air to find
Through paths untrodden, spite of waves or wind.
Hush decent muse and leave such things as these
To modest Maygrier and concise Dewees.
As some green school girl, who at morn forgets,
Lost in strange thoughts her wanton pantalets,
Squats, stoops and straddles, while the passers stare
Alas! unconscious that her limbs are bare,
So thou, forgetful that another spies
Things which escape thy unsuspecting eyes
Would'st freak and gambol while thy neighbors see
The white warm flesh above thy gartered knee.
Thus with the entrance of the first born man
The reign of Science o'er the earth began.
Nurse of his weakness, soother of his woes,
She waits and watches till his sorrows close;
Nor yet she leaves him when the undying mind
Flits from his clay and leaves the frame behind.

If thou should'st wonder that mankind must die,
Ask the Curator of our Museum, why?
When man's immortal, who had ever seen
The stomach, colon, kidneys, pancreas, spleen?
Each pickled viscus, every varnished bone,
Seducing scirrhus and attractive stone?
Lost to the world, had never come to grace
Our well filled phials in their padlocked case.
Unknown to fame had Morgagni sighed
And Louis floated down oblivion's tide.
On “Brunner's glands” no cheering ray had shone,
And “Peyer” claimed no “patches” but his own.
Science untaught her scalpel to employ.
Had seen no Ileum since the days of Troy;
And man the ruler of the storms and tides
Had groped in ignorance of his own insides.
Thus the same art that caught our earliest breath
Lives with our life and lasts beyond our death.
Man, ever curious, still would seek to save
Some wreck of Knowledge from the waiting grave.
Yet keen-eyed searcher into Nature's laws,
Slight not the suffering while thou reck'st the cause.
How poor the solace, when thy patients die,
To tell the mourners all the reasons why.
Love linked with Knowledge crowns thy angel art;
Gold buys thy science; Heaven rewards thy heart.

Between two breaths, what worlds of anguish lie;
The first short gasp, the last and long drawn sigh.
Thou who hast aided with coercive thumbs
The red-legged infant, kicking as it comes;
Thou who hast tracked each doubtful lesion home
With probe and scissors, knife and enterotome;
Short is the opening; short the closing scene;
But a long drama fills the stage between.
Nor deem it strange, since every season flings
Its sun or cloud on life's unguarded springs;
Since song or science, love of fame, or truth,
All feed like vampires on the brow of youth;
Since the red goblet shakes the hand that grasps
And hot-cheeked beauty wastes the form she clasps;
One half mankind should spend their time to make
The pills and draughts the other half must take.
Oh! fertile source of never failing wealth,
Mysterious faith! thou alchemist of health;
But for thy wand, how vainly should we strive
To cure the world and keep ourselves alive!
Not all the fruit the yellow harvest yields,
When the curved sickle sweeps the rustling fields;
Not all the stores the deep-sunk vessel brings
When India's breezes swell her perfumed wings:
Not all the gems, whose wild Auroras shine
Through the black darkness of Golconda's mine,
Can match the profits thou dost still dispense
To thy best favorites—Ease and Impudence,
Who find Golconda in a case of gout
Or rich Potosi in a baby's clout;
And gather ingots, ever fresh and hot
Smelt, but not smelted, in a chamber-pot.

Small is the learning which the patients ask
When the grave Doctor ventures on his task;
To greet the Quack admiring hundreds come,
Whose wisdom centers in his fife and drum;
Why should'st thou study, if thou canst obtain
A wig, a gig, an eye glass or a cane?
Greenest of greenhorns, know that drugs like these
Are the best weapons to subdue disease.
Should'st thou not flourish by enacting lies,
Step into print, good friend, and advertise;
And in the “Post,” the “Herald,” or the “Sun”
Thus let thine honest manifestoes run:
That great physician, learned Dr. C.
F. R. S., Staff-surgeon and M.D.—
Lately from London; now at number “four”
Left side of North Street (Don't mistake the door),
May be consulted for life's various ills;
Where's also sold the patent “Pickwick Pills.”
What grieves the Doctor, is that all mankind
To their own good should be so shocking blind.
He could not stand it, but relief imparts
The grateful feeling of a thousand hearts;
His fee is nothing; 'tis his conscious skill,
Backed by the virtues of the “Pickwick Pill,”
That prompts the Doctor to dispense his cure
To all mankind, and also to the poor.
What is dyspepsia? When the humors vile,
The cardiac sphincter closes on the bile.
What cures dyspepsia?—Why, the Doctor's skill,
Consult by letter, and enclose a bill.
What's fluor albus? 'Tis a term we know
From “albus”—white, and “fluor,” Greek, to flow.
'Tis the great pest of lovely woman's life—
Females treated through the Doctor's wife.
What's gonorrhoea?—A disease so called
From “gonor”—water, and from “rhea”—scald.
In some rash moment, when unguarded youth
Strays from the path of reason and of truth,
The poison enters, the disease is hatched;
See your case cured, not plastered up and patched.
N.B.—No money till the patient's cured.
P.S.—The utmost secrecy insured.
Observe! the Doctor has a private door;
Green blinds, no steps, back stairs, and second floor.
Of testimonials, which have come in heaps,
But two small cartloads now the Doctor keeps;
They were too numerous for the public eyes;
Hence the small number which he now supplies.
John Smith of Boston—aged “thirty-five”
Is much surprised to find himself alive,
Which justly owing, as he thinks must be,
Half to his Maker, half to Doctor C.
Had a stuffed feeling, used to wake in starts,
Had wind and rumbling in the inward parts,
Had swelled stomach, used to vomit some,
Was often squeamish, thought his brains were numb,
Had fell away, could not digest his food,
Had tried all physics—nothing did him good—
In short was dying with his numerous ills,
“Cured by three doses of the Pickwick Pills.”
The Doctor's skill, the sluggard clergy owns,
As in this note from Reverend Judas Jones:
“Dear Sir, The blessing of the Lord attend
You and your ointment, called ‘The loafer's friend,’
My worthy wife, the partner of my toils,
Like Job of old, has suffered from the ‘boils,’
Some on her fingers, wherewithal she knits,
Some on her person, whereupon she sits,
Which quite unfit her, when her ail returns,
To do her duties by her small concerns.
Since times are hard, and earthly comforts dear,
And Gospel harvests come but once a year,
With my good deacon, I resolved to halve
One precious box of your unrivalled salve.
With heaven's kind blessing, and one hearty rub,
We chased away this leprous Beelzebub.
Enough was left to cure our warts and styes,
And six great pimples on my handmaid's thighs.
Please send three boxes, by the earliest hand
To Judas Jones, your servant at command.
P. S. Your pills have cured my baby's fits;
I'll write particulars if the Lord permits.”

The following letter sent to Doctor C.
Comes from Barrabas Waterpot, M. D.:
“Dear Sir, The duties which I owe mankind,
Have made it proper I should speak my mind;
And while my breast an honest conscience fills,
I can but praise the patent “Pickwick Pills.”
I have no interest in the pills at stake
And never sell them and but rarely take.
Fit for the welfare of a suffering race,
Their many virtues, I now feebly trace:
When taken fasting, they the strength maintain;
When on full stomach, they deplete the brain;
One pill relieves the almost drowning thirst;
Two, keep one sober, though he drink to burst.
One pill a week cures Phthisis and the Gout;
One half a pill will keep the measles out.
Rubbed on the fingers they destroy the itch;
Worn next the skin, Lumbago and the stitch,
Though, like a corkscrew they the bowels search,
A curious fact—they never work in church!
Small children take them with advantage great,
As also ladies in a certain state.
In short, this medicine every want fulfils,
I give no physic but the “Pickwick Pills.”
Please print this letter, which of use may be,
(Signed) Barrabas Waterpot, M. D.”

Here's a small postscript Doctor C. left out
Of small importance to the public doubt:
“The pills sell briskly—twenty gross or more,
Send a fresh parcel to the grocer's store;
Put in more jalap; never mind expense,
Folks must be griped or grudge their fifty cents.
Put up two sizes, one three times as small,
For little brats; the big ones kill them all.
I want my pay, you poison pounding knave
Send me good bills—How like the D-1 you shave.”
All this well printed, and with bigger type
Words like Dyspepsia, Liver, Humor, Gripe,
Two solid columns in the “Times” would fill
And make thy fortune by the “Pickwick Pill.”

But thou, poor dreamer, who hast rashly thought
To live by knowledge which thy bloom has bought;
Thou who hast waited with a martyr's smile—
Hope gently whispering—“Yet a while”—
Too proud to stoop beneath thy nobler aim,
While prostrate meanness crawls to wealth and fame;
Thou, all unfriended, while a thousand fools
Vaunt their raw cousins, reeking from the schools,
Go, scorn the art that every boon denies,
'Till age sits glassy in thy sunken eyes;
Go, scorn the treasury which withholds its store
Till hope grows cold, and blessings bless no more.

Peace to our banquet; let me not prolong,
Its nearest moments with my idle song.
This measured tread of ever marching rhyme,
Like clockwork, pleases only for a time;
Too long repeated makes our heart so sick
We cut the weights to stop its tedious click.
Let sweeter strains our opening hearts inspire,
The listening echoes tremble round the lyre.
Dance Bacchus! hours of labor come again,
To lock the rivets of our loosened chain.
Shine, star of evening, with thy steadiest ray,
To guide us homeward on our devious way.