THE SONNET OUT OF JOINT.
It happen'd about a lugubrious opuscle
An old Bard of Truro was making a bustle,
In hot agitation exclaiming: “Fie on it!
The blunder hath spoil'd the effect of my sonnet:
The Devil had come with a proof, very sly—
Said the Bard to the Devil—“You 've put out my Eye!”
“See under”—'Tis only cast down,” quoth the Devil,
With a grin on his countenance rather uncivil.
“'Tis not cast away—though perhaps on the brink;
At a slip Sir! so slight, may we hope you will wink?
I cannot but say that it seems all awry—
And well may we call it a cast of the Eye.”
“Cast down, to be sure! But, good Sir, to be righted
If you wish, in a twinkling we'll make you upsighted!
And, bless me! it seems after all to belong
To a “multitude”—yea to the deuce of a throng!
So, whate'er from above or below it espy,
Old Argus, to this, scarcely had a cat's eye.”
Cried the Poet—“For such an abuse of your types,
And your pert repartees, you deserve many stripes!”
And he bluster'd yet more in a fume, till at last
The Devil himself, like his types, was downcast:
And from flagellation, exceedingly shy,
Sneak'd away, on the Bard as he cast a sheep's-eye.
“Stop—stop—you should know (said the gray Sonneteer)
To me and my race reputation is dear;
I tell you—(the Devil look'd shrewd and asquint)
'Tis of moment to me, tho' you see nothing in't.
Provoking!”—when whisper'd a Wag who stood by,
“Hold your tongue—no more nonsense—'tis all in my eye!”
THE SONNET.
[_]
[Written on Tuesday, between the hours of 3 and 4, during the
tolling of the minute-bell at St. Mary's, at the approach of
Lord De Dunstanville's Funeral Procession.]
Dunstanville!—Is it not the funeral knell
That seems to gather visionary glooms,
Deepening the shadows of the nodding plumes
O'er “down and dale,” to where thy Fathers rest?
Again—again I hear its solemn swell,
Sad monitor of frail mortality!
O in that stillness—in that sudden pause
“Without a breath”—O is there not the applause
To shame the shouts of millions!
I hail, in all that countless multitude, [every eye]
Set on thy Coronet—in sooth to say:
“Number'd on earth amongst the great and good,
Be thine, in blessing others only blest,
The incorruptible Crown, through Heaven's eternal day!”
