The Poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed With a Memoir by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. Fourth Edition. In Two Volumes |
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 | The Poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed |  |
Lord! what would be the Cynic's mirth,
If Fate would lift him to the earth,
And set his tub, with magic jump,
Squat down beside the Brocas Clump!
What scoffs the sage would utter there
From his unpolished elbow-chair,
To see the sempstress' handiwork,
The Greek confounded with the Turk,
Parisian mixed with Piedmontese,
And Persian joined to Portuguese;
And mantles short, and mantles long,
And mantles right, and mantles wrong,
Mis-shaped, miscoloured, and misplaced
With what the tailor calls a taste!
And then the badges and the boats,
The flags, the drums, the paint, the coats;
But more than these, and more than all,
The puller's intermitted call—
“Easy!”—“Hard all!”—“Now pick her up!”—
“Upon my life, how I shall sup!”—
Would be a fine and merry matter
To wake the sage's love of satire.
Kind Readers, at my laughing age
I thank my stars I'm not a sage;
I, an unthinking scribbling elf,
Love to please others—and myself;
Therefore I fly a malo joco,
But like desipere in loco.
Excuse me, that I wander so;
All modern pens digress, you know.
If Fate would lift him to the earth,
And set his tub, with magic jump,
Squat down beside the Brocas Clump!
What scoffs the sage would utter there
From his unpolished elbow-chair,
To see the sempstress' handiwork,
The Greek confounded with the Turk,
Parisian mixed with Piedmontese,
And Persian joined to Portuguese;
And mantles short, and mantles long,
And mantles right, and mantles wrong,
Mis-shaped, miscoloured, and misplaced
With what the tailor calls a taste!
And then the badges and the boats,
The flags, the drums, the paint, the coats;
But more than these, and more than all,
The puller's intermitted call—
“Easy!”—“Hard all!”—“Now pick her up!”—
“Upon my life, how I shall sup!”—
113
To wake the sage's love of satire.
Kind Readers, at my laughing age
I thank my stars I'm not a sage;
I, an unthinking scribbling elf,
Love to please others—and myself;
Therefore I fly a malo joco,
But like desipere in loco.
Excuse me, that I wander so;
All modern pens digress, you know.
| The Poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed | |