The complete poetical works of Thomas Hood :: :: University of Virginia Library

Think of old maids of seventy—fourscore,
Fourscore old women at the temple's door,
Those that can read, and those that learn to spell—
Oh now—or fare thee well!

Suppose our names a history—suppose
Our love forepicked to pieces, like a rose
Shed blushing all abroad—my Isabel!
Oh now—or fare thee well!

ON A SLEEPING CHILD

I

O, 'tis a touching thing to make one weep—
A tender infant with its curtain'd eye,
Breathing as it would neither live nor die,
With that unmoving countenance of sleep!

403

As if its silent dream, serene and deep,
Had lined its slumbers with a still blue sky;
So that the passive cheeks unconscious lie,
With no more life than roses', just to keep
The blushes warm and the mild odorous breath:
O blossom-boy! so calm is thy repose,
So sweet a compromise of life and death,
'Tis pity those fair buds should e'er unclose,
For Memory to stain their inward leaf,
Tinging thy dreams with unacquainted grief.

II

Thine eyelids slept so beauteously, I deem'd
No eyes would wake more beautiful than they;
Thy glossy cheeks so unimpassion'd lay,
I loved their peacefulness, and never dream'd
Of dimples; for thy parted lips so seem'd
I did not think a smile could sweetlier play,
Nor that so graceful life could charm away
Thy graceful death, till those blue eyes upbeam'd.
Now slumber lies in dimpled eddies drown'd,
And roses bloom more rosily for joy,
And odorous silence ripens into sound,
And fingers move to mirth,—All-beauteous boy!
How dost thou waken into smiles, and prove,
If not more lovely, thou art more like Love!

404

[IN MEMORIAM]

Little eyes that scarce did see,
Little lips that never smiled;
Alas! my little dear dead child,
Death is thy father, and not me,
I but embraced thee, soon as he.

ODE

‘I'll give him dash for dash.’

J[erda]n, farewell! farewell to all
Who ever prais'd me, great or small;
Your poet's course is run!
A weekly—no, an ev'ryday
Reviewer takes my fame away,
And I am all undone!

I cannot live an author long!
When I did write, O I did wrong
To aim at being great;
A Diamond Poet in a pin
May twinkle on in peace, and win
No diamond critic's hate!

No small inditer of reviews
Will analyse his tiny muse,
Or lay his sonnets waste;
Who strives to prove that Richardson,
That calls himself a diamond one,
Is but a bard of paste?

427

The smallest bird that wings the sky
May tempt some sparrowshot and die;
But midges still go free!
The peace that shuns my board and bed
May settle on a lowlier head,
And dwell, ‘St. John, with thee!’

I aim'd at higher growth; and now
My leaves are wither'd on the bough,
I'm choked by bitter shrubs!
O Mr. F. C. W.!
What can I christen thy review
But one of ‘Wormwood Scrubs?’

The very man that sought me once—
Can I so soon be grown a dunce?—
He now derides my verse;
But who, save me, will fret to find
The editor has changed his mind,—
He can't have got a worse.

ODE IMITATED FROM HORACE

Oh! well may poets make a fuss
In summer time, and sigh ‘O rus!’
Of London pleasures sick:
My heart is all at pant to rest
In greenwood shades,—my eyes detest
This endless meal of brick!

What joy have I in June's return?
My feet are parch'd—my eyeballs burn,
I scent no flowery gust;
But faint the flagging zephyr springs,
With dry Macadam on its wings,
And turns me ‘dust to dust.’

My sun his daily course renews
Due east, but with no Eastern dews;
The path is dry and hot!
His setting shows more tamely still,
He sinks behind no purple hill,
But down a chimney's pot!

Oh! but to hear the milk-maid blithe,
Or early mower whet his scythe
The dewy meads among!—
My grass is of that sort—alas!—
That makes no hay,—call'd sparrow-grass
By folks of vulgar tongue!

Oh! but to smell the woodbine sweet!
I think of cowslip-cups—but meet
With very vile rebuffs!
For meadow buds, I get a whiff
Of Cheshire cheese,—or only sniff
The turtle made at Cuff's.

How tenderly Rousseau review'd
His periwinkles!—mine are stew'd!
My rose blooms on a gown!
I hunt in vain for eglantine,
And find my blue-bell on the sign
That marks the Bell and Crown!

Where are ye, birds! that blithely wing
From tree to tree, and gaily sing
Or mourn in thickets deep?
My cuckoo has some ware to sell,
The watchman is my Philomel,
My blackbird is a sweep!

429

Where are ye, linnet! lark! and thrush!
That perch on leafy bough and bush,
And tune the various song?
Two hurdy-gurdists, and a poor
Street-Handel grinding at my door,
Are all my ‘tuneful throng.’

Where are ye, early-purling streams,
Whose waves reflect the morning beams
And colours of the skies?
My rills are only puddle-drains
From shambles—or reflect the stains
Of calimanco-dyes.

Sweet are the little brooks that run
O'er pebbles glancing in the sun,
Singing in soothing tones:—
Not thus the city streamlets flow;
They make no music as they go,
Tho' never ‘off the stones.’

Where are ye, pastoral pretty sheep,
That wont to bleat, and frisk, and leap
Beside your woolly dams?
Alas! instead of harmless crooks,
My Corydons use iron hooks,
And skin—not shear—the lambs.

The pipe whereon, in olden day,
Th' Arcadian herdsman us'd to play
Sweetly—here soundeth not;
But merely breathes unwelcome fumes,
Meanwhile the city boor consumes
The rank weed—‘piping hot.’

All rural things are vilely mock'd,
On every hand the sense is shock'd
With objects hard to bear:
Shades,—vernal shades!—where wine is sold!
And for a turfy bank, behold
An Ingram's rustic chair!

Where are ye, London meads and bow'rs,
And gardens redolent of flow'rs
Wherein the zephyr wons?
Alas! Moor Fields are fields no more!
See Hatton's Garden brick'd all o'er;
And that bare wood—St. John's.

No pastoral scene procures me peace;
I hold no Leasowes in my lease,
No cot set round with trees:
No sheep-white hill my dwelling flanks
And omnium furnishes my banks
With brokers—not with bees.

Oh! well may poets make a fuss
In summer time, and sigh ‘O rus!’
Of city pleasures sick:
My heart is all at pant to rest
In greenwood shades,—my eyes detest
This endless meal of brick!

STANZAS TO TOM WOODGATE, OF HASTINGS

I

Tom!—are you still within this land
Of livers—still on Hastings' sand,
Or roaming on the waves,—
Or has some billow o'er you rolled,
Jealous that earth should lap so bold
A seaman in her graves?

II

On land the rush-light lives of men
Go out but slowly; nine in ten,
By tedious long decline,—
Not so the jolly sailor sinks,
Who founders in the wave, and drinks
The apoplectic brine!

III

Ay, while I write, mayhap your head
Is sleeping on an oyster-bed,—
I hope 'tis far from truth!
With periwinkle eyes;—your bone
Beset with mussels, not your own,
And corals at your tooth!

430

IV

Still does the Chance pursue the chance
The main affords—the Aidant dance
In safety on the tide?
Still flies that sign of my good-will
A little bunting thing—but still
To thee a flag of pride?

V

Does that hard, honest hand now clasp
The tiller in its careful grasp—
With every summer breeze
When ladies sail, in lady-fear—
Or, tug the oar, a gondolier
On smooth Macadam seas?

VI

Or are you where the flounders keep,
Some dozen briny fathoms deep,
Where sands and shells abound—
With some old Triton on your chest
And twelve grave mermen for a 'quest,
To find that you are—drowned?

VII

Swift is the wave, and apt to bring
A sudden doom—perchance I sing
A mere funereal strain;—
You have endured the utter strife—
And are—the same in death or life,
A good man in the main!

VIII

Oh, no—I hope the old brown eye
Still watches ebb and flood and sky;
That still the old brown shoes
Are sucking brine up—pumps indeed!
Your tooth still full of ocean weed,
Or Indian—which you choose.

IX

I like you, Tom! and in these lays
Give honest worth its honest praise,
No puff at honour's cost;
For though you met these words of mine,
All letter-learning was a line
You, somehow, never crossed!

X

Mayhap, we ne'er shall meet again,
Except on that Pacific main,
Beyond this planet's brink;—
Yet as we erst have braved the weather,
Still we may float awhile together,
As comrades on this ink!

XI

Many a scudding gale we've had
Together, and, my gallant lad,
Some perils we have passed;
When huge and black the wave careered,
And oft the giant surge appeared
The master of our mast:—

XII

'Twas thy example taught me how
To climb the billow's hoary brow,
Or cleave the raging heap—
To bound along the ocean wild,
With danger only as a child,
The waters rocked to sleep.

XIII

Oh, who can tell that brave delight,
To see the hissing wave in might,
Come rampant like a snake!
To leap his horrid crest, and feast
One's eyes upon the briny beast,
Left couchant in the wake!

XIV

The simple shepherd's love is still
To bask upon a sunny hill,
The herdsman roams the vale—
With both their fancies I agree;
Be mine the swelling, scooping sea,
That is both hill and dale!

XV

I yearn for that brisk spray—I yearn
To feel the wave from stem to stern
Uplift the plunging keel.
That merry step we used to dance,
On board the Aidant or the Chance,
The ocean ‘toe and heel.’

431

XVI

I long to feel the steady gale,
That fills the broad distended sail—
The seas on either hand!
My thought, like any hollow shell,
Keeps mocking at my ear the swell
Of waves against the land.

XVII

It is no fable—that old strain
Of sirens!—so the witching main
Is singing—and I sigh!
My heart is all at once inclined
To seaward—and I seem to find
The waters in my eye!

XVIII

Methinks I see the shining beach;
The merry waves, each after each,
Rebounding o'er the flints;—
I spy the grim preventive spy!
The jolly boatmen standing nigh!
The maids in morning chintz!

XIX

And there they float—the sailing craft!
The sail is up—the wind abaft—
The ballast trim and neat.
Alas! 'tis all a dream—a lie!
A printer's imp is standing by,
To haul my mizen sheet!

XX

My tiller dwindles to a pen—
My craft is that of bookish men—
My sale—let Longman tell!
Adieu the wave! the wind! the spray!
Men—maidens—chintzes—fade away!
Tom Woodgate, fare thee well!

[EPISTLE TO MISS CHARLOTTE REYNOLDS]

My dear Lot,
There's a blot!—
This is to write
That Sunday night
By the late
Coach at eight,
We shall get in
To little Britain,—
So have handy
Gin, rum, Brandy
A lobster,—may be—
Cucumbers, they be
Also in season
And within reason—
Porter—by Gum!
Against we come—
In lieu of Friday
Then we keep high day
And holy, as long as
We can. I get strong as
A horse—i.e., pony
Jane tho' keeps boney.
How is your mother,
Still with your brother,
And Marian too—
And that good man too
Call'd your papa, Miss.
After these ah Miss!
Don't say I never
Made an endeavour
To write you verses
Tho' this lay worse is
Than any I've written
The truth is, I've sitten
So long over letters
Addressed to your betters
That—that—that
Some how—
My pen—

Amen.

T. Hood.

[July 11, 1828.]

435

BIRTHDAY VERSES

Good-morrow to the golden Morning!
Good-morrow to the world's delight!
I've come to bless thy life's beginning,
That hath made my own so bright!

I have brought no roses, Dearest!
Summer lies upon her bier;
It was when all sweets were over
Thou wert born to bless the year.

But I bring thee jewels, Fairest!
In thy bonny locks to shine;
And, if love seem in their glances,
They have learn'd that look of mine!

436

THE SWEETS OF YOUTH

‘Sweets to the sweet—farewell.’ —Hamlet.

Time was I liked a cheesecake well enough;
All human children have a sweetish taste—
I used to revel in a pie, or puff,
Or tart—we all were tartars in our youth;
To meet with jam or jelly was good luck,
All candies most complacently I crumped,
A stick of liquorice was good to suck,
And sugar was as often liked as lumped;
On treacle's ‘linkèd sweetness long drawn out,’
Or honey, I could feast like any fly,
I thrilled when lollipops were hawk'd about,
How pleased to compass hard bake or bull's eye,
How charmed if fortune in my power cast
Elecampane—but that campaign is past!

441

ANTICIPATION

‘Coming events cast their shadow before.’

I had a vision in the summer light—
Sorrow was in it and my inward sight
Ached with sad images. The touch of tears
Gush'd down own my cheeks:—the figur'd woes of years
Casting their shadows across sunny hours.
Oh there was nothing sorrowful in flow'rs
Wooing the glances of an April sun,
Or apple blossoms opening one by one
Their crimson bosoms—or the twitter'd words
And warbled sentences of merry birds;—

445

Or the small glitter and the humming wings
Of golden flies and many colour'd things—
Oh these were nothing sad—nor to see Her,
Sitting beneath the comfortable stir
Of early leaves—casting the playful grace
Of moving shadows on so fair a face—
Nor in her brow serene—nor in the love
Of her mild eyes drinking the light above
With a long thirst—nor in her gentle smile—
Nor in her hand that shone blood-red the while
She rais'd it in the sun. All these were dear
To heart and eye—but an invisible fear
Shook in the trees and chill'd upon the air,
And if one spot was laughing brightest—there
My soul most sank and darken'd in despair!—
As if the shadows of a curtain'd room
Haunted me in the sun—as if the bloom
Of early flow'rets had no sweets for me
Nor apple blossoms any blush to see—
As if the noon had brought too bright a day—
And little birds were all too gay!—too gay!
As if the beauty of that Lovely One
Were all a fable.—Full before the sun
Stood Death and cast a shadow long before,
Like a dark pall enshrouding her all o'er,
Till eyes, and lips, and smiles, were all no more!

THE BALLAD

O, when I was a little boy—
This print the time recalls—
What strips of song there hung along
Old palings and old walls!

O, how they flaunted in the air,
And flutter'd on their strings!
I'd heard of Muses, and they seemed
Like feathers from their wings—

Dim flimsy papers, little fit
With Newland's bills to rank;
But O! there seem'd whole millions there
In notes of Boyhood's Bank!

With what a charm of black and white
They witch'd the urchin sense!
How blest if I could stop and buy!
How pensive—without pence!

How hard, alas! if forced to pass
By that enchanted place,
In dismal sort—a farthing short—
To long for ‘Chevy Chase.’

One comfort liv'd—if pence were scant,
There still was Mary Dunn—
So stored with song, she seem'd the whole
Nine Muses rolled in one.

Her pocket money never went
For cheesecake or for tart;
She purchased all new songs, I had
The old ones each by heart.

When Mary set to sing, to read,
All sport and play stood still—
Her words could lock a waggon wheel,
And stop the march to drill.

Meanwhile, the tragic tale she told
Of Babies in the Wood
And gentle Redbreast,—or that bold
Cock Robin, Robin Hood,

Will Scarlet, and his merry mates,
Who Lincoln Green had on—
I listen'd till I thought myself
A little Little John.

O, happy times! O, happy rhymes!
For ever ye're gone by!
Few now—if any—are the lays
Can make me smile or sigh.

Perchance myself am changed—perchance
I do their authors wrong—
But scarce a modern ballad now
Seems worthy ‘an old song.’

EPIGRAM ON A PICTURE

This picture very plainly shows
How little many a painter knows
Of colour, though he thinks it.
T--- herein depicts a view,
And underneath gamboge and blue
Informs us that T. pinxit.

ANSWER TO PAUPER

Don't tell me of buds and blossoms,
Or with rose and vi'let wheedle—
Nosegays grow for other bosoms,
Churchwarden and Beadle!
What have you to do with streams?
What with sunny skies, or garish,
Cuckoo songs or pensive dreams?—
Nature's not your parish!

What right have such as you to dun
For sun or moonbeams, warm or bright?
Before you talk about the sun,
Pay for window-light!
Talk of passions—amorous fancies;
While your betters' flames miscarry—
If you love your Dolls and Nancys,
Don't we make you marry?

Talk of wintry chill and storm,
Fragrant winds, that blanch your bones;
You poor can always keep you warm,
An't there breaking stones?
Suppose you don't enjoy the spring,
Roses fair and vi'lets meek,—
You cannot look for everything
On eighteenpence a week!

With seasons what have you to do?—
If corn doth thrive, or wheat is harmed?—
What's weather to the cropless? You
Don't farm—but you are farm'd!
Why everlasting murmurs hurl'd,
With hardship for the text?—
If such as you don't like this world—
We'll pass you to the next.

Overseer.

ODE TO SPENCER PERCEVAL, ESQ., M.P.

Oh, Mr. Spencer!—
I mean no offence, Sir—
Retrencher of each trencher, man or woman's;
Maker of days of ember,
Eloquent member
Of the House of Com—I mean to say short commons,
Thou Long Tom Coffin singing out, ‘Hold fast’—
Avast!
Oh! Mr. Perceval, I'll bet a dollar, a
Great growth of cholera,
And new deaths reckon'd,
Will mark thy Lenten twenty-first and second.
The best of our physicians, when they con it,
Depose the malady is in the air:
Oh, Mr. Spencer!—if the ill is there,
Why should you bid the people live upon it?

Why should you make discourses against courses;
While Doctors, though they bid us rub and chafe,
Declare, of all resources,
The man is safest who gets in the safe?
And yet you bid poor suicidal sinners
Discard their dinners!
Thoughtless how Heav'n above will look upon't,
For men to die so wantonly of want!

By way of a variety,
Think of the ineffectual piety
Of London's Bishop, at St. Faith's or Bride's,
Lecturing such chameleon insides,
Only to find
He's preaching to the wind.
Whatever others do, or don't,
I cannot—dare not—must not fast, and wont,
Unless by night your day you let me keep,
And fast asleep;
My constitution can't obey such censors:
I must have meat
Three times a day to eat,
My health's of such a sort,—
To say the truth in short—
The coats of my stomach are not Spencers.

ON THE DEATH OF SIR WALTER SCOTT

Farewell, Sir Walter Scott, secured
From Time,—our greatest of Inditers!
No Author's fame's so well assur'd,
For all who wrote were Under-writers.

454

A CHARITY SERMON

‘“I would have walked many a mile to have communed with you; and, believe me, I will shortly pay thee another visit; but my friends, I fancy, wonder at my stay, so let me have the money immediately.” Trulliber then put on a stern look, and cried out, “Thou dost not intend to rob me?”

‘“I would have thee know, friend,” addressing himself to Adams, “I shall not learn my duty from such as thee. I know what charity is, better than to give to vagabonds.”’

—Joseph Andrews.

I'm an extremely charitable man—no collar and long hair, though a little carroty;
Demure, half-inclined to the unknown tongues, but I never gain'd anything by Charity—
I got a little boy into the Foundling, but his unfortunate mother was traced and baited,
And the overseers found her out—and she found me out—and the child was affiliated.

Oh, Charity will come home to roost—
Like curses and chickens is Charity.

I once, near Whitehall's very old wall, when ballads danc'd over the whole of it,
Put a bad five-shilling piece into a beggar's hat, but the old hat had got a hole in it;
And a little boy caught it in his little hat, and an officer's eye seem'd to care for it,
As my bad crown-piece went through his bad crownpiece, and they took me up to Queen's Square for it.

Oh, Charity, &c.

I let my very old (condemn'd) old house to a man, at a rent that was shockingly low,
So I found a roof for his ten motherless babes—all defunct and fatherless now;
For the plaguey one-sided party-wall fell in, so did the roof, on son and daughter,
And twelve jurymen sat on eleven bodies, and brought in a very personal verdict of Manslaughter.

Oh, Charity, &c.

I picked up a young well-dress'd gentleman, who had fallen in a fit in St. Martin's Court,
And charitably offer'd to see him home,—for charity always seem'd to be my forte,
And I've had presents for seeing fallen gentlemen home, but this was a very unlucky job—
Do you know, he got my watch—my purse—and my handkerchief—for it was one of the swell mob.

Oh, Charity, &c.

460

Being four miles from Town, I stopt a horse that had run away with a man, when it seem'd that they must be dash'd to pieces,
Though several kind people were following him with all their might—but such following a horse his speed increases;
I held the horse while he went to recruit his strength; and I meant to ride home, of course;
But the crowd came up and took me up—for it turned out the man had run away with the horse.

Oh, Charity, &c.

I watch'd last month all the drovers and drivers about the suburbs, for it's a positive fact,
That I think the utmost penalty ought always to be enforc'd against everybody under Mr. Martin's Act;
But I couldn't catch one hit over the horns, or over the shins, or on the ears, or over the head;
And I caught a rheumatism from early wet hours, and got five weeks of ten swell'd fingers in bed.

Oh, Charity, &c.

Well, I've utterly done with Charity, though I us'd so to preach about its finest fount;
Charity may do for some that are more lucky, but I can't turn it to any account—
It goes so the very reverse way—even if one chirrups it up with a dust of piety;
That henceforth let it be understood, I take my name entirely out of the List of the Subscribers to the Humane Society.

Oh, Charity, &c.

ODE TO SIR ANDREW AGNEW, BART.

‘At certain seasons he makes a prodigious clattering with his bill.’ —Selby.

‘The bill is rather long, flat, and tinged with green.’ —Bewick.

O Andrew Fairservice,—but I beg pardon,
You never labour'd in Di Vernon's garden,
On curly kale and cabbages intent,—
Andrew Churchservice was the thing I meant,—
You are a Christian—I would be the same,
Although we differ, and I'll tell you why,
Not meaning to make game,
I do not like my Church so very High!

When people talk, as talk they will,
About your bill,
They say, among their other jibes and small jeers,
That, if you had your way,
You'd make the seventh day
As overbearing as the Dey of Algiers.
Talk of converting Blacks—
By your attacks,
You make a thing so horrible of one day,
Each nigger, they will bet a something tidy,
Would rather be a heathenish Man Friday,
Than your Man Sunday!

So poor men speak,
Who, once a week,
P'rhaps, after weaving artificial flowers,
Can snatch a glance of Nature's kinder bowers,
And revel in a bloom
That is not of the loom,
Making the earth, the streams, the skies, the trees,
A Chapel of Ease.
Whereas, as you would plan it,
Wall'd in with hard Scotch granite,

464

People all day should look to their behaviours,—
But though there be, as Shakspeare owns,
‘Sermons in stones,’
Zounds! Would you have us work at them like paviours?

Spontaneous is pure devotion's fire;
And in a green wood many a soul has built
A new Church, with a fir-tree for its spire,
Where Sin has prayed for peace, and wept for guilt,
Better than if an architect the plan drew;
We know of old how medicines were back'd,
But true Religion needs not to be quack'd
By an Un-merry Andrew!

Suppose a poor town-weary sallow elf
At Primrose-hill would renovate himself,
Or drink (and no great harm)
Milk genuine at Chalk Farm,—
The innocent intention who would baulk,
And drive him back into St. Bennet Fink?
For my part, for my life, I cannot think
A walk on Sunday is ‘the Devil's Walk.’

But there's a sect of Deists, and their creed
Is D---ing other people to be d---d,—
Yea, all that are not of their saintly level,
They make a pious point
To send, with an ‘aroint,’
Down to that great Fillhellenist, the Devil.
To such, a ramble by the River Lea,
Is really treading on the ‘Banks of D---.’

Go down to Margate, wisest of law-makers,
And say unto the sea, as Canute did,
(Of course the sea will do as it is bid,)
‘This is the Sabbath—let there be no Breakers!’
Seek London's Bishop, on some Sunday morn,
And try him with your tenets to inoculate,—
Abuse his fine souchong, and say in scorn,
‘This is not Churchman's Chocolate!’

Or, seek Dissenters at their mid-day meal,
And read them from your Sabbath Bill some passages,
And while they eat their mutton, beef, and veal,
Shout out with holy zeal,—
‘These are not Chappel's sassages!’
Suppose your Act should act up to your will,
Yet how will it appear to Mrs. Grundy,
To hear you saying of this pious bill,
‘It works well—on a Sunday!’

465

To knock down apple-stalls is now too late,
Except to starve some poor old harmeless madam;—
You might have done some good, and chang'd our fate,
Could you have upset that, which ruined Adam!
'Tis useless to prescribe salt-cod and eggs,
Or lay post-horses under legal fetters,
While Tattersall's on Sunday stirs its Legs,
Folks look for good examples from their Betters!

Consider,—Acts of Parliament may bind
A man to go where Irvings are discoursing—
But as for forcing ‘proper frames of mind,’
Minds are not framed, like melons, for such forcing!

Remember, as a Scottish legislator,
The Scotch Kirk always has a Moderator;
Meaning one need not ever be sojourning
In a long Sermon Lane without a turning.
Such grave old maids as Portia and Zenobia
May like discourses with a skein of threads,
And love a lecture for its many heads,
But as for me, I have the Hydra-phobia.

Religion one should never overdo:
Right glad I am no minister you be,
For you would say your service, sir, to me,
Till I should say, ‘My service, sir, to you.’
Six days made all that is, you know, and then
Came that of rest—by holy ordination,
As if to hint unto the sons of men,
After creation should come re-creation.
Read right this text, and do not further search
To make a Sunday Workhouse of the Church.

ODE TO J. S. BUCKINGHAM, ESQ., M.P.

ON THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF DRUNKENNESS

‘Steady, boys, steady,’ —Sea Song.

‘Then did they fall upon the chat of drinking; and forthwith began Flaggons to go, Goblets to fly, great Bowls to ting, Glasses to ring, draw, reach, fill, mix, give it me without water; so, my Friend, so; whip me off this Glass neatly, bring me hither some Claret, a full weeping Glass till it run over!’ —Rabelais.

‘Now, seeing that every Vessell was empty, great and small, with not so much at the Bottom as would befuddle or muddle even a Fly, such as are the Flies of Baieux, I say, seeing this lamentable sight, Gargantua leapt up on one of the Tables, and with Tears in his eyes as big as Cannon Bullets, did pathetically beseech Pantagruel, as well as he could for the Hiccups and the Drinking Cups, and all sorts of Cups, as he valued his precious Body and Soul, one or both, never to drink more than became a reasonable Man, and not a Hog and a Beast. And the Stint of a reasonably reasonable Man is thus much, to wit, seven Thousand three Hundred and fifty-three Hogsheads, twice as many Kilderkins, thrice as many little Kegs, and as many Flaggons, Bottles, and Tankards as you will, beside. A Christian ought not to drink more. As Gargantua said these Words his Voice grew thick, his Tongue being as it were too huge for his Mouth; and on a sudden he turned dog-sick, and fell off the Table a prodigious Fall, whereby there was a horrible Earthquake, from Paris even unto Turkey in Asia, as is remembered unto this day.’ —Rabelais.

466

O, Mr. Buckingham, if I may take
The liberty with you and your Committee,
Some observations I intend to make,
I hope will prove both pertinent and pretty.
On Drunkenness you've held a special court,
But is consistency, I ask, your forte,
When after (I must say) much Temperance swaggering,
You issue a Report,
That's staggering!

Of course you labour'd without drop or sup,
Yet certain parts of that Report to read,
Some men might think indeed,
A corkscrew, not a pen, had drawn it up.
For instance, was it quite a sober plan
On such a theme as drunkenness to trouble
A poor old man,
Who could not e'en see single, much less double.
Blind some six years,
As it appears,
He gives in evidence, and you receive it,
A flaming picture of a flaming palace,
Where gin-admirers sipped the chalice
And then, (the banter is not bad,)
Thinks fit to add,
You really should have seen it to believe it.
That he could see such sights I must deny,
Unless he borrowed Betty Martin's eye.
A man that is himself walks in a line,
One, not himself, goes serpentine,
And as he rambles
In crablike scrambles,
The while his body works in curves,
His intellect as surely swerves,
And some such argument as this he utters,
‘While men get cut we must have cutters,
As long as Jack will have his rum,
We must have pink, corvette, and bomb,
Each sort of craft
Since Noah's old raft,
Frigate and brig,
Ships of all rig,
We must have fleets, because our sailors swig,

467

But only get our tars to broths and soups,
And see how slops will do away with sloops!
Turn flip to flummery, and grog to gravy,
And then what need has England of a navy?’
Forgive my muse; she is a saucy hussy,
But she declares such reasoning sounds muzzy,
And that, as sure as Dover stands at Dover,
The man who entertains so strange a notion
Of governing the ocean,
Has been but half seas over.

Again: when sober people talk
On soberness, would not their words all walk
Straight to the point, instead of zig-zag trials,
Of both sides of the way, till having crost
And crost, they find themselves completely lost
Like gentlemen,—rather cut—in Seven Dials?
Just like the sentence following in fact:
‘Every Act
Of the Legislature,’ (so it runs) ‘should flow
Over the bed,’—of what?—begin your guesses.
The Bed of Ware?
The State Bed of the May'r?

One at the Hummums? Of MacAdam's? No.
A parsley bed?
Of cabbage, green or red?
Of onions? daffodils? of water-cresses?
A spare-bed with a friend—one full of fleas?
At Bedford, or Bedhampton?—None of these.
The Thames's bed? The bed of the New River?
A kennel? brick-kiln? or a stack of hay?
Of church-yard clay,
The bed that's made for ev'ry mortal liver?
No—give it up,—all guessing I defy in it,
It is the bed of ‘Truth,’—‘inspired’ forsooth
As, if you gave your best best-bed to Truth
She'd lie in it!
Come, Mr. Buckingham, be candid, come,
Didn't that metaphor want ‘seeing home’?

What man, who did not see far more than real,
Drink's beau ideal,—
Could fancy the mechanic so well thrives.
In these hard times,
The source of half his crimes
Is going into gin-shops changing fives!

468

Whate'er had wash'd such theoretic throats,
After a soundish sleep, till twelve next day,
And, perhaps, a gulp of soda—did not they
All change their notes?

Suppose, mind, Mr. B., I say, suppose
You were the landlord of the Crown—the Rose—
The Cock and Bottle, or the Prince of Wales,
The Devil and the Bag of Nails,
The Crown and Thistle,
The Pig and Whistle,
Magpie and Stump—take which you like,
The question equally will strike;
Suppose your apron on—top-boots,—fur cap—
Keeping an eye to bar and tap,
When in comes, muttering like mad,
The strangest customer you ever had!
Well, after rolling eyes and mouthing,
And calling for a go of nothing,
He thus accosts you in a tone of malice:
‘Here's pillars, curtains, gas, plate-glass—What not?
Zounds! Mr. Buckingham, the shop you've got
Beats Buckingham Palace!
It's not to be allowed, Sir; I'm a Saint,
So I've brought a paint-brush, and a pot of paint,
You deal in Gin, Sir,
Glasses of Sin, Sir;
No words—Gin wholesome?—You're a story-teller—
I don't mind Satan standing at your back,
The Spirit moveth me to go about,
And paint your premises inside and out,
Black, Sir, coal black,
Coal black, Sir, from the garret to the cellar.
I'll teach you to sell gin—and, what is more,
To keep your wicked customers therefrom,
I'll paint the Great Death's Head upon your door—
Write underneath it, if you please—Old Tom!’

Should such a case occur,
How would you act with the intruder, Sir?
Surely, not cap in hand, you'd stand and bow,
But after hearing him proceed thus far,
(Mind—locking up the bar)
You'd seek the first policeman near,
‘Here, take away this fellow, here,
The rascal is as drunk as David's Sow!’

469

If I may ask again—between
Ourselves and the General Post, I mean—
What was that gentleman's true situation
Who said—but could he really stand
To what he said?—‘In Scottish land
The cause of Drunkenness was education!’

Only, good Mr. Buckingham, conceive it!
In modern Athens, a fine classic roof,
Christened the High School—that is, over proof!
Conceive the sandy laddies ranged in classes,
With quaichs and bickers, drinking-horns and glasses,
Ready to take a lesson in Glenlivet!
Picture the little Campbells and M'Gregors,
Dancing, half fou', by way of learning figures;
And Murrays,—not as Lindley used to teach—
Attempting verbs when past their parts of speech—
Imagine Thompson, learning A B C,
By O D V.
Fancy a dunce that will not drink his wash,
And Master Peter Alexander Weddel
Invested with a medal
For getting on so very far-in-tosh.
Fancy the Dominie—a drouthy body,
Giving a lecture upon making toddy,
Till having emptied every stoup and cup,
He cries, ‘Lads! go and play—the school is up!’

To Scotland, Ireland is akin
In drinking, like as twin to twin,—
When other means are all adrift,
A liquor-shop is Pat's last shift,
Till reckoning Erin round from store to store,
There is one whisky shop in four.
Then who, but with a fancy rather frisky,
And warm besides, and generous with whiskey,
Not seeing most particularly clear,
Would recommend to make the drunkards thinner,
By shutting up the publican and sinner
With pensions each of fifty pounds a year?
Ods! taps and topers! private stills and worms!
What doors you'd soon have open to your terms!

470

To men of common gumption,
How strange, besides, must seem
At this time any scheme
To put a check upon potheen's consumption,
When all are calling out for Irish Poor Laws!
Instead of framing more laws,
To pauperism, if you'd give a pegger,
Don't check, but patronise their ‘Kill-the-Beggar!’

If Pat is apt to go in Irish Linen,
(Buttoning his coat, with nothing but his skin in)
Would any Christian man—that's quite himself,
His wits not floor'd, or laid upon the shelf—
While blaming Pat for raggedness, poor boy,
Would he deprive him of his ‘Corduroy!’
Would any gentleman, unless inclining
To tipsy, take a board upon his shoulder,
Near Temple Bar, thus warning the beholder,
‘Beware of Twining?’
Are tea dealers, indeed, so deep-designing,
As one of your select would set us thinking,
That to each tea-chest we should say Tu Doces,
(Or doses,)
Thou tea-chest drinking?

What would be said of me
Should I attempt to trace
The vice of drinking to the high in place,
And say its root was on the top o' the tree?
But I am not pot-valiant, and I shun
To say how high potheen might have a run.

What would you think, if, talking about stingo,
I told you that a lady friend of mine,
By only looking at her wine
Flushed in her face as red as a flamingo?
Would you not ask of me, like many more,—
‘Pray, Sir, what had the lady had before?’

471

Suppose at sea, in Biscay's bay of bays,—
A rum cask bursting in a blaze,—
Should I be thought half tipsy or whole drunk,
If running all about the deck I roar'd
‘I say, is ever a Cork man aboard?’
Answered by some Hibernian Jack Junk,
While hitching up his tarry trouser,—
How would it sound in sober ears, O how, Sir,
If I should bellow with redoubled noise,
‘Then sit upon the bung-hole, broth of boys?’

When men—the fact's well known—reel to and fro,
A little what is called how-come-you-so,
They think themselves as steady as a steeple,
And lay their staggerings on other people—
Taking that fact in pawn,
What proper inference would then be drawn
By e'er a dray-horse with a head to his tail,
Should anybody cry,
To some one going by,
‘O fie! O fie! O fie!
You're drunk—you've nigh had half a pint of ale!’

One certain sign of fumes within the skull
They say is being rather slow and dull,
Oblivious quite of what we are about—
No one can doubt
Some weighty queries rose, and yet
You miss'd 'em,
For instance, when a Doctor so bethumps
What he denominates ‘the forcing system,’
Nobody asks him about forcing-pumps!

Oh say, with hand on heart,
Suppose that I should start
Some theory like this,—
‘When Genesis
Was written—before man became a glutton,
And in his appetites ran riot,
Content with simple vegetable diet,
Eating his turnips without leg of mutton,

472

His spinach without lamb—carrots sans beef,
'Tis my belief
He was a polypus, and I'm convinc'd
Made other men when he was hash'd or minced!’—
Did I in such a style as this proceed,
Would you not say I was Farre gone, indeed?

Excuse me, if I doubt at each Assize
How sober it would look in public eyes,
For our King's Counsel and our learned Judges
When trying thefts, assaults, frauds, murders, arsons,
To preach from texts of temperance like parsons,
By way of giving tipplers gentle nudges.
Imagine my Lord Bayley, Parke or Park,
Donning the fatal sable cap, and hark,
‘These sentences must pass, howe'er I'm pang'd
You Brandy must return—and Rum the same—
To the Goose and Gridiron, whence you came—
Gin!—Reverend Mr. Cotton and Jack Ketch
Your spirit jointly will despatch—
Whiskey, be hang'd!’

Suppose that some fine morning,
Mounted upon a pile of Dunlop cheeses,
I gave the following as public warning,
Would there not be sly winking, coughs and sneezes?
Or dismal hiss of universal scorn.
‘My brethren, don't be born,—
But if you're born, be well advised—
Don't be baptised.
If both take place, still at the worst
Do not be nursed,—
At every birth each gossip dawdle
Expects her caudle,
At christenings, too, drink always hands about,
Nurses will have their porter or their stout,—
Don't wear clean linen, for it leads to sin,—
All washerwomen make a stand for gin—
If you're a minister—to keep due stinting,
Never preach sermons that are worth the printing,

473

Avoid a steam-boat with a lady in her,
And when you court, watch Miss well after dinner.
Never run bills, or if you do don't pay,
And give your butter and your cheese away,—
Build yachts and pleasure-boats if you are rich,
But never have them launched or payed with pitch,
In fine, for Temperance if you stand high,
Don't die!’
Did I preach thus, Sir, should I not appear
Just like the ‘parson much bemused with beer?’

Thus far, O Mr. Buckingham, I've gather'd,
But here, alas! by space my pen is tether'd,
And I can merely thank you all in short,
The witnesses that have been called in court,
And the Committee for their kind Report,
Whence I have picked and puzzled out this moral,
With which you must not quarrel,
'Tis based in charity—That men are brothers,
And those who make a fuss,
About their Temperance thus,
Are not so much more temperate than others.

What is your occupation? My occupation has been in the weaving line; but having the dropsy six years ago, I am deprived of my eyesight.

2734. Did you not once see a gin-shop burnt down?—About nine months ago there was the sign of the Adam and Eve at the corner of Church-street, at Bethnal-green, burnt down, and they had such a quantity of spirits in the house at the time that it was such a terrible fire, that they were obliged to throw everything into the middle of the road to keep it away from the liquor, and it was all in flames in the road; and the gin-shop opposite was scorched and broke their windows; and there was another gin-shop at the opposite corner, at three corners there were gin-shops, and was, from the fire, just like a murdering concern; for you could not get round the corner at all, it was so thronged that a man could not believe it unless he saw it.

3893. If temperance were universal, do you think we should need any line-of-battle ships? —It would be very unsafe for us to be without them.

1686. Do you mean to infer from that, that the law in all its branches should be in accordance with the Divine command?—I do; every Act of the Legislature should flow over the bed of inspired truth, and receive the impregnation of its righteous and holy principles.

2512. Are they in the habit of bringing £5 notes to get changed, as well as sovereigns?—Very rarely; I should think a £5 note is an article they seldom put in their pockets.

3006. Do you think it would be of good effect, were the Legislature to order that those houses should be painted all black, with a large death's head and cross-bones over the door?—I wish they would do even so much.

4502. What are the remote causes that have influenced the habit of drinking spirits among all classes of the population?—One of the causes of drunkenness in Scotland is education.

3804. Did you observe the drinking of spirits very general in Ireland?—In Ireland, I think, upon a moderate calculation, one shop out of every four is a whiskey-shop, throughout the whole kingdom. Those who have been unsuccessful in every other employment, and those who have no capital for any employment, fly to the selling of whiskey as the last shift.

773. Now suppose we were to give £50 a-year to every spirit-seller in Belfast, to pension them off (and I am sure it would be much better for the country that they should be paid for doing nothing than for doing mischief)—

794. We have in our neighbourhood a species of whiskey of this kind, called ‘Kill-the-Beggar.’

795. Another description of what would be termed adulterated spirits, is by the vulgar termed ‘Corduroy.’

789. It is quite common, in Dublin particularly, to have at one end of the counter a large pile of tea-chests for females to go behind, to be hid from sight: but the dangerous secrecy arises chiefly from the want of suspicion in persons going into grocers' shops.

788. It is a well known fact, that mechanics' wives not unfrequently get portions of spirituous liquors at grocers' shops, and have them set down to their husbands' accounts as soap, sugar, tea, &c.

816. Do you ascribe the great inclination for whiskey at present existing among the lower classes, originally to the use of it by the higher classes as a favourite drink? I attribute a very large portion of the evil arising from the use of spirituous liquors to the sanction they have received from the higher classes; the respectable in society I hold to be the chief patrons of drunkenness.

759. What do you mean by the phrase ‘run’?—It means, according to a common saying, that for one gallon made for the King, another is made for the Queen.

4627. A lady informed me lately, that in dining out, although she should not taste a drop in the hob and nob at dinner, yet the lifting of the glass as frequently as etiquette requires, generally flushed her face a good deal before dinner was ended.

3901. Are you aware of the cause of the burning of the Kent East Indiaman in the Bay of Biscay?—Holding a candle over the bung-hole of a cask of spirits, the snuff fell into the cask and set it on fire. They had not presence of mind to put in the bung, which would have put out the fire; and if a man had sat on the bung-hole it would not have burnt him, and it would have put it out.

4282. Do many young men visit those houses?—A very great many have done, more so than what visit the regular public-houses. I was in one of those places about twelve months ago, waiting for a coach, and there came into the beer-shop twenty-two boys, who called for half a gallon of ale, which they drank, and then they called for another.

1211. The over-stimulation, which too frequently ends in the habit of drunkenness in Great Britain in every class, is the result of the British forcing system simply.

1282. Was not vegetable food prescribed in the first chapter of Genesis?—Vegetable food was appointed when the restorative power of man was complete. The restorative power in some of the lower animals is still complete. If a polypus be truncated or cut into several pieces, each part will become a perfect animal. —Vide Evidence of Dr. Farre.

975. What happy opportunities, for example, are offered to each Judge and King's Counsellor at every assize, to denounce all customary use of distilled spirit as the great incitement to crime. The proper improvement of such opportunities would do much for temperance.

4642. When a clergyman gets a new manse he is fined in a bottle of wine; when he has been newly married, this circumstance subjects him to the same amicable penalty; the birth of a child also costs one bottle, and the publication of a sermon another. —By J. Dunlop, Esq.

4637. The absolute necessity of treating females in the same manner, in steam-boat jaunts, is lamentable.

4637. Some youths have been known to defer their entrance into a temperate society till after their marriage, lest failure in the usual compliments should be misconstrued, and create a coldness with their future wives.

It (drinking) is employed in making bargains, at the payment of accounts.

4639. A landlady, in settling with a farmer for his butter and cheese, brings out the bottle and the glass with her own hands, and presses it on his acceptance. How can he refuse a lady soliciting him to do what he is, perhaps, unfortunately already more than half inclined to?

4640. The launching bowl is a bonus of drink, varying from £2 to £10, according to the size of the ship, bestowed by the owners on the apprentices of a ship-building yard at the launch of a vessel. The graving bowl is given to the journeyman after a vessel is payed with tar.

4638. On the event of a decease, every one gets a glass who comes within the door until the funeral, and for six weeks after it.

THE UNITED FAMILY

‘We stick at nine.’ —Mrs. Battle.

‘Thrice to thine
And thrice to mine,
And thrice again,
To make up nine.’
The Weird Sisters in Macbeth.

How oft in families intrudes
The demon of domestic feuds,
One liking this, one hating that,
Each snapping each, like dog and cat,
With divers bents and tastes perverse,
One's bliss, in fact, another's curse.
How seldom anything we see
Like our united family!

Miss Brown of chapels goes in search,
Her sister Susan likes the church;
One plays at cards, the other don't;
One will be gay, the other won't:
In pray'r and preaching one persists,
The other sneers at Methodists;
On Sundays ev'n they can't agree
Like our united family.

474

There's Mr. Bell, a Whig at heart,
His lady takes the Tories' part,
While William, junior, nothing loth,
Spouts Radical against them both.
One likes the News, one takes the Age,
Another buys the unstamp'd page;
They all say I, and never we,
Like our united family.

Not so with us;—with equal zeal
We all support Sir Robert Peel;
Of Wellington our mouths are full,
We dote on Sundays on John Bull,
With Pa and Ma on selfsame side,
Our house has never to divide—
No opposition members be
In our united family.

Miss Pope her ‘Light Guitar’ enjoys,
Her father ‘cannot bear the noise,’
Her mother's charm'd with all her songs,
Her brother jangles with the tongs:
Thus discord out of music springs,
The most unnatural of things,
Unlike the genuine harmony
In our united family!

We all on vocal music doat;
To each belongs a tuneful throat,
And all prefer that Irish boon
Of melody—‘The Young May Moon’—
By choice we all select the harp,
Nor is the voice of one too sharp,
Another flat—all in one key
Is our united family.

Miss Powell likes to draw and paint,
But then it would provoke a saint,
Her brother takes her sheep for pigs,
And says her trees are periwigs.
Pa praises all, black, blue, or brown;
And so does Ma—but upside down!
They cannot with the same eye see,
Like our united family.

Miss Patterson has been to France,
Her heart's delight is in a dance;
The thing her brother cannot bear,
So she must practise with a chair.
Then at a waltz her mother winks;
But Pa says roundly what he thinks
All dos-à-dos, not vis-à-vis,
Like our united family.

We none of us that whirling love,
Which both our parents disapprove,
A hornpipe we delight in more,
Or graceful Minuet de la Cour.
A special favourite with Mamma,
Who used to dance it with Papa,
In this we still keep step, you see,
In our united family.

Then books—to hear the Cobbs' debates!
One worships Scott—another hates,
Monk Lewis Ann fights stoutly for,
And Jane likes ‘Bunyan's Holy War.’
The father on Macculloch pores,
The mother says all books are bores;
But blue serene as heav'n are we,
In our united family.

We never wrangle to exalt
Scott, Banim, Bulwer, Hope, or Galt,
We care not whether Smith or Hook,
So that a novel be the book,
And in one point we all are fast,
Of novels we prefer the last,—
In that the very Heads agree
Of our united family!

To turn to graver matters still,
How much we see of sad self-will!
Miss Scrope, with brilliant views in life,
Would be a poor lieutenant's wife.
A lawyer has her pa's good word,
Her Ma has looked her out a Lord.
What would they not all give to be
Like our united family!

By one congenial taste allied,
Our dreams of bliss all coincide,
We're all for solitudes and cots,
And love, if we may choose our lots—
As partner in the rural plan
Each paints the same dear sort of man;
One heart alone there seems to be
In our united family.

475

One heart, one hope, one wish, one mind,—
One voice, one choice, all of a kind,—
And can there be a greater bliss—
A little heav'n on earth—than this?
The truth to whisper in your ear,
It must be told!—we are not near
The happiness that ought to be
In our united family!

Alas! 'tis our congenial taste
That lays our little pleasures waste—
We all delight, no doubt, to sing,
We all delight to touch the string,
But where's the heart that nine may touch?
And nine ‘May Moons’ are eight too much—
Just fancy nine, all in one key,
Of our united family!

The play—Oh how we love a play,
But half the bliss is shorn away;
On winter nights we venture nigh,
But think of houses in July!
Nine crowded in a private box,
Is apt to pick the stiffest locks—
Our curls would all fall out, though we
Are one united family!

In art the self-same line we walk,
We all are fond of heads in chalk,
We one and all our talent strain
Adelphi prizes to obtain;
Nine turban'd Turks are duly sent,
But can the royal Duke present
Nine silver palettes—no, not he—
To our united family.

Our eating shows the very thing,
We all prefer the liver-wing,
Asparagus when scarce and thin,
And peas directly they come in,
The marrow-bone—if there be one—
The ears of hare when crisply done,
The rabbit's brain—we all agree
In our united family.

In dress the same result is seen,
We all so doat on apple-green;
But nine in green would seem a school
Of charity to quizzing fool—
We cannot all indulge our will
With that sweet silk on Ludgate Hill,
No remnant can sufficient be
For our united family.

In reading hard is still our fate,
One cannot read o'erlooked by eight,
And nine ‘Disowned’—nine ‘Pioneers,’
Nine ‘Chaperons,’ nine ‘Buccaneers,’
Nine ‘Maxwells,’ nine ‘Tremaines,’ and such,
Would dip into our means too much—
Three months are spent o'er volumes three,
In our united family.

Unhappy Muses! if the Nine
Above in doom with us combine,—
In vain we breathe the tender flame,
Our sentiments are all the same,
And nine complaints address'd to Hope
Exceed the editorial scope,
One in, and eight put out, must be
Of our united family!

But this is nought—of deadlier kind,
A ninefold woe remains behind.
O why were we so art and part?
So like in taste, so one in heart?
Nine cottages may be to let,
But here's the thought to make us fret,
We cannot each add Frederick B.
To our united family.

POETRY, PROSE, AND WORSE

‘Esaad Kiuprili solicited in verse permission to resign the government of Candia. The Grand Vizier, Hafiz Pasha, addressed a Ghazel to the Sultan to urge the necessity of greater activity in military preparations; and Murad, himself a poet, answered likewise in rhyme. Ghazi Gherai clothed in Ghazels his official complaint to the Sultan's preceptor. The Grand Vizier, Mustafa Pasha Bahir, made his reports to the Sultan in verse.’ —Vide Von Hammer on Othoman Literature in the Athenœum for Nov. 14, 1835.

O Turkey! how mild are thy manners,
Whose greatest and highest of men
Are all proud to be rhymers and scanners,
And wield the poetical pen!

The Sultan rejects—he refuses—
Gives orders to bowstring his man;
But he still will coquet with the Muses,
And make it a song if he can.

The victim cut shorter for treason,
Though conscious himself of no crime,
Must submit and believe there is reason,
Whose sentence is turned into rhyme!

He bows to the metrical firman
As dulcet as song of the South,
And his head, like self-satisfied German,
Rolls off with its pipe in its mouth.

A tax would the Lord of the Crescent?
He levies it still in a lay,
And is p'rhaps the sole Bard at this present
Whose poems are certain to pay.

State edicts unpleasant to swallow
He soothes with the charm of the Muse,
And begs rays of his brother Apollo
To gild bitter pills for the Jews.

478

When Jealousy sets him in motion
The fair one on whom he looks black,
He sews up with a sonnet to Ocean,
And sends her to drown in her sack.

His gifts, they are poesies latent
With sequins roll'd up in a purse,
And in making Bashaws, by the patent
Their tails are all ‘done into verse.’

He sprinkles with lilies and roses
The path of each politic plan,
And with eyes of Gazelles discomposes
The beards of the solemn Divan.

The Czar he defies in a sonnet,
And then a fit nag to endorse
With his Pegasus, jingling upon it,
Reviews all his Mussulman horse.

He sends a short verse, ere he slumbers,
Express unto Meer Ali Beg,
Who returns in poetical numbers
The thousands that die of the plague.

He writes to the Bey of a city
In tropes of heroical sound,
And is told in a pastoral ditty
The place is burnt down to the ground.

He sends a stern summons, but flow'ry,
To Melex Pasha, for some wrong,
Who describes the dark eyes of his Houri,
And throws off his yoke with a song.

His Vizier presents him a trophy,
Still, Mars to Calliope weds—
With an amorous hymn to St. Sophy
A hundred of pickled Greek heads.

Each skull with a turban upon it
By Royal example is led:
Even Mesrour the Mute has a Sonnet
To Silence composed in his head.

Ev'n Hassan while plying his hammer
To punish short weight to the poor,
With a stanza attempts to enamour
The ear that he nails to a door.

O! would that we copied from Turkey
In this little Isle of our own,
Where the times are so muddy and murky,
We want a poetical tone!

Suppose that the Throne in addresses—
For verse there is plenty of scope—
In alluding to native distresses,
Just quoted the ‘Pleasures of Hope.’

Methinks 'twould enliven and chirp us,
So dreary and dull is the time,
Just to keep a State Poet on purpose
To put the King's speeches in rhyme.

When bringing new measures before us,
As bills for the sabbath or poor,
Let both Houses just chaunt them in chorus,
And p'rhaps they would get an encore.

No stanzas invite to pay taxes
In notes like the notes of the south,
But we're dunn'd by a fellow what axes
With prose and a pen in his mouth.

Suppose—as no payers are eager—
Hard times and a struggle to live—
That he sung at our doors like a beggar
For what one thought proper to give?

Our Law is of all things the dryest
That earth in its compass can show!
Of poetical efforts its highest
The rhyming its Doe with its Roe.

No documents tender and silky
Are writ such as poets would pen,
When a beadle is sent after Wilkie,
Or bailiffs to very shy men.

479

The warrants that put in distresses
When rates have been owing too long,
Should appear in poetical dresses,
Ere goods be sold off for a song.

Suppose that—Law making its choices
Of Bishop, Hawes, Rodwell, or Cooke,—
They were all set as glees for four voices,
To sing all offenders to book?

Our criminal code's as untender,
All prose in its legal despatch,
And no constables seize an offender
While pleasantly singing a catch.

They haul him along like a heifer,
And tell him ‘My covey, you'll swing!’
Not a hint that the wanton young zephyr
Will fan his shoe-soles with her wing.

The trial has nothing that's rosy
To soften the prisoner's pap,
And Judge Park appears dreadfully prosy
Whilst dooming to death in his cap.

Would culprits go into hysterics,
Their spirits more likely elope,
If the jury consulted in lyrics,
The judge made a line of the rope?

When men must be hung for a warning,
How sweet if the law would incline
In the place of the ‘Eight in the morning,’
To let them indulge in the Nine!

How pleasant if ask'd upon juries
By Muses, thus mild as the doves,
In the place of the Fates and the Furies
That call us from home and our loves!

Our warfare is deadly and horrid,
Its bald bulletins are in prose,
And with gore made revoltingly florid,
Nor tinted with couleur de rose.

How pleasant in army despatches
In reading of red battle-plains,
To alight on some pastoral snatches,
To sweeten the blood and the brains!

How sweet to be drawn for the Locals
By songs setting valour a-gog!
Or be press'd to turn tar by sea-vocals
Inviting—with ‘Nothing like Grog!’

To tenants but shortish at present,
When Michaelmas comes with its day,
O! a landlord's effusion were pleasant
That talk'd of the flowers in May!

How sweet if the bill that rehearses
The debt we've incurr'd in the year,
But enrich'd, as a copy of verses,
The Gem, or a new Souvenir!

O! would that we copied from Turkey
In this little Isle of our own!
For the times are so moody and murky,
We want a poetical tone!

Vide the advertisement of ‘The Parish Beadle after Wilkie,’ issued by Moon & Co.

DOMESTIC POEMS

‘It's hame, hame, hame.’ —A. Cunningham.

‘There's no place like home.’ —Clari.

I HYMENEAL RETROSPECTIONS

O Kate! my dear Partner, through joy and through strife!
When I look back at Hymen's dear day,
Not a lovelier bride ever chang'd to a wife,
Though you're now so old, wizen'd, and grey!

Those eyes, then, were stars, shining rulers of fate!
But as liquid as stars in a pool;
Though now they're so dim, they appear, my dear Kate,
Just like gooseberries boil'd for a fool!

That brow was like marble, so smooth and so fair;
Though it's wrinkled so crookedly now,
As if Time, when those furrows were made by the share,
Had been tipsy whilst driving his plough!

Your nose, it was such as the sculptors all chose,
When a Venus demanded their skill;
Though now it can hardly be reckon'd a nose,
But a sort of Poll-Parroty bill!

Your mouth, it was then quite a bait for the bees,
Such a nectar there hung on each lip;
Though now it has taken that lemon-like squeeze,
Not a blue-bottle comes for a sip!

Your chin, it was one of Love's favourite haunts,
From its dimple he could not get loose;
Though now the neat hand of a barber it wants,
Or a singe, like the breast of a goose!

How rich were those locks, so abundant and full,
With their ringlets of auburn so deep!
Though now they look only like frizzles of wool,
By a bramble torn off from a sheep!

That neck, not a swan could excel it in grace,
While in whiteness it vied with your arms;
Though now a grave 'kerchief you properly place,
To conceal that scrag-end of your charms!

Your figure was tall, then, and perfectly straight,
Though it now has two twists from upright—
But bless you! still bless you! my Partner! my Kate!
Though you be such a perfect old fright!

483

II

[The sun was slumbering in the West]

The sun was slumbering in the West,
My daily labours past;
On Anna's soft and gentle breast
My head reclined at last;—
The darkness clos'd around, so dear
To fond congenial souls,
And thus she murmur'd at my ear,
‘My love, we're out of coals!—

‘That Mister Bond has call'd again,
Insisting on his rent;
And all the Todds are coming up
To see us, out of Kent;—
I quite forgot to tell you John
Has had a tipsy fall;—
I'm sure there's something going on
With that vile Mary Hall!—

‘Miss Bell has bought the sweetest silk,
And I have bought the rest—
Of course, if we go out of town,
Southend will be the best.—
I really think the Jones's house
Would be the thing for us;—
I think I told you, Mrs. Pope
Has parted with her nus—

‘Cook, by the way, came up to-day
To bid me suit myself—
And what d'ye think? the rats have gnawed
The victuals on the shelf.—
And, lord! there's such a letter come,
Inviting you to fight!
Of course you don't intend to go—
God bless you, dear, good-night!’

III A PARENTAL ODE TO MY SON, AGED THREE YEARS AND FIVE MONTHS

Thou happy, happy elf!
(But stop,—first let me kiss away that tear)—
Thou tiny image of myself!
(My love, he's poking peas into his ear!)
Thou merry, laughing sprite!
With spirits feather-light,
Untouch'd by sorrow and unsoil'd by sin—
(Good heavens! the child is swallowing a pin!)

Thou little tricksy Puck!
With antic toys so funnily bestuck,
Light as the singing bird that wings the air—
(The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair!)
Thou darling of thy sire!
(Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore a-fire!)
Thou imp of mirth and joy!
In love's dear chain so strong and bright a link,
Thou idol of thy parents—(Drat the boy!
There goes my ink!)

Thou cherub—but of earth;
Fit playfellow for Fays, by moonlight pale,
In harmless sport and mirth,
(That dog will bite him if he pulls its tail!)

484

Thou human humming-bee, extracting honey
From ev'ry blossom in the world that blows,
Singing in Youth's Elysium ever sunny—
(Another tumble!—that's his precious nose!)

Thy father's pride and hope!
(He'll break the mirror with that skipping-rope!)
With pure heart newly stamp'd from Nature's mint—
(Where did he learn that squint?)
Thou young domestic dove!
(He'll have that jug off, with another shove!)
Dear nursling of the hymeneal nest!
(Are those torn clothes his best!)
Little epitome of man!
(He'll climb upon the table, that's his plan!)
Touch'd with the beauteous tints of dawning life—
(He's got a knife!)

Thou enviable being!
No storms, no clouds, in thy blue sky foreseeing,
Play on, play on,
My elfin John!
Toss the light ball—bestride the stick—
(I knew so many cakes would make him sick!)
With fancies buoyant as the thistledown,
Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk,
With many a lamb-like frisk—
(He's got the scissors, snipping at your gown!)

Thou pretty opening rose!
(Go to your mother, child, and wipe your nose!)
Balmy, and breathing music like the South,
(He really brings my heart into my mouth!)
Fresh as the morn, and brilliant as its star,—
(I wish that window had an iron bar!)
Bold as the hawk, yet gentle as the dove—
(I'll tell you what, my love,
I cannot write, unless he's sent above!)

IV A SERENADE

‘Lullaby, oh, lullaby!’
Thus I heard a father cry,
‘Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
The brat will never shut an eye;
Hither come, some power divine!
Close his lids or open mine!

‘Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
What the devil makes him cry?
Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Still he stares—I wonder why?
Why are not the sons of earth
Blind, like puppies, from the birth?

485

‘Lullaby, oh, lullaby!’
Thus I heard the father cry;
‘Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Mary, you must come and try!—
Hush, oh, hush, for mercy's sake—
The more I sing, the more you wake!

‘Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Fie, you little creature, fie;
Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Is no poppy-syrup nigh?
Give him some, or give him all,
I am nodding to his fall!

‘Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Two such nights, and I shall die!
Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
He'll be bruised, and so shall I,—
How can I from bedposts keep,
When I'm walking in my sleep?

‘Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Sleep his very looks deny—
Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Nature soon will stupify—
My nerves relax,—my eyes grow dim—
Who's that fallen—me or him?’

JOHN JONES A PATHETIC BALLAD

‘I saw the iron enter into his soul.’ Sterne.

John Jones he was a builder's clerk,
On ninety pounds a year,
Before his head was engine-turn'd
To be an engineer!

For, finding that the iron roads
Were quite the public tale,
Like Robin Redbreast, all his heart
Was set upon a rail.

But oh! his schemes all ended ill,
As schemes must come to nought
With men who try to make short cuts
When cut with something short.

His altitudes he did not take
Like any other elf;
But first a spirit-level took
That levell'd him himself.

Then getting up, from left to right
So many tacks he made,
The ground he meant to go upon
Got very well survey'd.

How crows may fly he did not care
A single fig to know;—
He wish'd to make an iron road,
And not an iron crow:

So, going to the Rose and Crown
To cut his studies short,
The nearest way from pint to pint,
He found was through a quart.

According to this rule he plann'd
His railway o'er a cup;
But when he came to lay it down,
No soul would take it up!

Alas! not his the wily arts
Of men as shrewd as rats,
Who out of one sole level make
A precious lot of flats!

In vain from Z to crooked S
His devious line he show'd;
Directors even seemed to wish
For some directer road.

The writers of the public press
All sneered at his design;
And penny-a-liners wouldn't give
A penny for his line!

Yet still he urged his darling scheme
In spite of all the fates;
Until at last his zigzag ways
Quite brought him into straits.

486

His money gone, of course he sank
In debt from day to day—
His way would not pay him, and so
He could not pay his way.

Said he, ‘All parties run me down,—
How bitter is my cup!
My landlord is the only man
That ever runs me up!

‘And he begins to talk of scores,
And will not draw a cork’;—
And then he rail'd at Fortune, since
He could not rail at York!

The morrow, in a fatal noose
They found him, hanging fast;
This sentence scribbled on the wall,—
‘I've got my line at last!’

Twelve men upon the body sate,
And thus, on oath, did say,
‘We find he got his gruel 'cause
He couldn't have his way!’

THE DEAD ROBBERY

‘Here's that will sack a city.’ —Henry the IVth.

Of all the causes that induce mankind
To strike against themselves a mortal docket,
Two eminent above the rest we find—
To be in love, or to be out of pocket:
Both have made many melancholy martyrs,
But p'rhaps, of all the felonies de se,
By ponds, and pistols, razors, ropes and garters,
Two thirds have been through want of £. s. d.!

Thus happen'd it with Peter Bunce;
Both in the dumps and out of them at once,
From always drawing blanks in Fortune's lottery,
At last, impatient of the light of day,
He made his mind up to return his clay
Back to the pottery.
Feigning a raging tooth that drove him mad,
From twenty divers druggists' shops
He begg'd enough of laudanum by drops
T' effect the fatal purpose that he had;
He drank them, died, and while old Charon ferried him,
The Coroner convened a dozen men,
Who found his death was phial-ent—and then
The Parish buried him!

496

Unwatch'd, unwept,
As commonly a Pauper sleeps, he slept;
There could not be a better opportunity
For bodies to steal a body so ill kept,
With all impunity:
In fact, when Night o'er human vice and folly
Had drawn her very necessary curtains,
Down came a fellow with a sack and spade,
Accustom'd many years to drive a trade,
With that Anatomy more Melancholy
Than Burton's!

The Watchman in his box was dozing;
The Sexton drinking at the Cheshire Cheese;
No fear of any creature interposing,
The human Jackal work'd away at ease:
He toss'd the mould to left and right,
The shabby coffin came in sight,
And soon it open'd to his double-knocks,—
When lo! the stiff'un that he thought to meet
Starts sudden up, like Jacky-in-a-box,
Upon his seat!

Awaken'd from his trance,
For so the laudanum had wrought by chance,
Bunce stares up at the moon, next looking level,
He spies a shady Figure, tall and bony,
Then shudders out these words ‘Are—you—the—Devil?’
‘The Devil a bit of him,’ says Mike Mahoney,
‘I'm only com'd here, hoping no affront,
To pick up honestly a little blunt—’
‘Blunt!’ echoes Bunce, with a hoarse croak of laughter,-
‘Why, man, I turn'd life's candle in the socket,
Without a rap in either pocket,
For want of that same blunt you're looking after!’
‘That's true,’ says Mike, ‘and many a pretty man
Has cut his stick upon your very plan,
Not worth a copper, him and all his trumps,
And yet he's fetch'd a dacent lot of stuff,
Provided he was sound and fresh enough,
And dead as dumps.’

‘I take,’ quoth Bunce, with a hard wink, ‘the fact is,
You mean a subject for a surgeon's practice,—
I hope the question is not out of reason,
But just suppose a lot of flesh and bone,
For instance, like my own,
What might it chance to fetch now, at this season?’
‘Fetch is it?’ answers Mike, ‘why prices differ,—
But taking this same small bad job of ours,
I reckon, by the pow'rs!
I've lost ten pound by your not being stiffer!’

‘Ten pounds!’ Bunce echoes in a sort of flurry,
‘Odd zounds!
Ten pounds,
How sweet it sounds,
Ten pounds!’
And on his feet upspringing in a hurry—
It seem'd the operation of a minute—
A little scuffle—then a whack—
And then he took the Body Snatcher's sack
And poked him in it!

497

Such is this life!
A very pantomime for tricks and strife!
See Bunce, so lately in Death's passive stock,
Invested, now as active as a griffin,
Walking—no ghost—in velveteens and smock,
To sell a stiff'un!

A flash of red, then one of blue,
At last, like lighthouse, came in view;
Bunce rang the nightbell; wiped his highlows muddy;
His errand told; sack produced;
And by a sleepy boy was introduced
To Dr. Oddy, writing in his study.
The bargain did not long take time to settle,
‘Ten pounds,
Odd zounds!
How well it sounds,
Ten pounds,’
Chink'd into Bunce's palm in solid metal.

With joy half-crazed,
It seem'd some trick of sense, some airy gammon,
He gazed and gazed,
At last, possess'd with the old lust of Mammon,
Thought he, ‘With what a very little trouble,
This little capital I now might double—’
Another scuffle of its usual brevity,—
And Doctor Oddy, in his suit of black,
Was finishing, within the sack,
His ‘Thoughts upon Longevity!’

The trick was done. Without a doubt,
The sleepy boy let Bunce and burthen out;
Who coming to a lone convenient place,
The body stripp'd; hid all the clothes, and then,
Still favoured by the luck of evil men,
Found a new customer in Dr. Case.
All more minute particulars to smother,
Let it suffice,
Nine guineas was the price
For which one doctor bought the other;
As once I heard a Preacher say in Guinea,
‘You see how one black sin bring on anudder,
Like little nigger pickaninny,
A-riding pick-a-back upon him mudder!’
‘Humph!’ said the Doctor, with a smile sarcastic,
Seeming to trace
Some likeness in the face,
‘So death at last has taken old Bombastic!’
But in the very middle of his joking,—
The subject, still unconscious of the scoff—
Seized all at once with a bad fit of choking,
He too was taken off!
Leaving a fragment ‘On the Hooping Cough.’

Satan still sending luck,
Another body found another buyer:
For ten pounds ten the bargain next was struck,
Dead doctors going higher.
‘Here,’ said the purchaser, with smile quite pleasant
Taking a glimpse at his departed brother,
‘Here's half a guinea in the way of present—
Subjects are scarce, and when you get another,
Let me be first.’—Bunce took him at his word,
And suddenly his old atrocious trick did,
Sacking M.D. the third,
Ere he could furnish ‘Hints to the Afflicted.’

498

Flush'd with success,
Beyond all hope or guess,
His new dead robbery upon his back,
Bunce plotted—such high flights ambition takes,—
To treat the Faculty like ducks and drakes,
And sell them all ere they could utter ‘Quack!’
But Fate opposed.—According to the schools,
When men become insufferably bad,
The gods confer to drive them mad;
March hairs upon the heads of April fools!
Tempted by the old demon avaricious,
Bunce traded on too far into the morning;
Till nods, and winks, and looks, and signs suspicious,
Ev'n words malicious,
Forced on him rather an unpleasant warning.
Glad was he to perceive, beside a wicket,
A porter, ornamented with a ticket,
Who did not seem to be at all too busy—
‘Here, my good man,
Just show me, if you can,
A doctor's—if you want to earn a tizzy!’

Away the porter marches,
And with grave face, obsequious precedes him,
Down crooked lanes, round corners, under arches;
At last, up an old-fashion'd staircase leads him,
Almost impervious to the morning ray,
Then shows a door—‘There, that's a doctor's reckon'd,
A rare Top-Sawyer, let who will come second—
Good day.’
‘I'm right,’ thought Bunce, ‘as any trivet;
Another venture—and then up I give it!’
He rings—the door, just like a fairy portal,
Opens untouch'd by mortal—
He gropes his way into a dingy room,
And hears a voice come growling through the gloom,
‘Well—eh?—Who? What?—Speak out at once!’
‘I will,’ says Bunce.
‘I've got a sort of article to sell;
Medical gemmen knows me very well—’
But think Imagination how it shock'd her
To hear the voice roar out, ‘Death! Devil! d---n!
Confound the vagabond, he thinks I am
A rhubarb-and-magnesia Doctor!’
‘No Doctor!’ exclaim'd Bunce, and dropp'd his jaw,
But louder still the voice began to bellow,
‘Yes,—yes,—odd zounds!—I am a Doctor, fellow,
At law!’
The word suffic'd.—Of things Bunce feared the most
(Next to a ghost)
Was law,—or any of the legal corps,—
He dropp'd at once his load of flesh and bone,
And, caring for no body, save his own,
Bolted,—and lived securely till four-score,
From never troubling Doctors any more!

‘NAPOLEON'S MIDNIGHT REVIEW’

A NEW VERSION

In his bed, bolt upright,
In the dead of the night,
The French Emperor starts like a ghost!
By a dream held in charm,
He uplifts his right arm,
For he dreams of reviewing his host.

To the stable he glides,
For the charger he rides;
And he mounts him, still under the spell;
Then, with echoing tramp,
They proceed through the camp,
All intent on a task he loves well.

Such a sight soon alarms,
And the guards present arms,
As he glides to the posts that they keep;
Then he gives the brief word,
And the bugle is heard,
Like a hound giving tongue in its sleep.

Next the drums they arouse,
But with dull row-de-dows,
And they give but a somnolent sound;
Whilst the foot and horse, both,
Very slowly and loth,
Begin drowsily mustering round.

519

To the right and left hand,
They fall in, by command,
In a line that might be better dress'd;
Whilst the steeds blink and nod,
And the lancers think odd
To be rous'd like the spears from their rest.

With their mouths of wide shape,
Mortars seem all agape,
Heavy guns look more heavy with sleep;
And, whatever their bore,
Seem to think it one more
In the night such a field day to keep.

Then the arms, christened small,
Fire no volley at all,
But go off, like the rest, in a doze;
And the eagles, poor things,
Tuck their heads 'neath their wings,
And the band ends in tunes through the nose.

Till each pupil of Mars
Takes a wink like the stars—
Open order no eye can obey:
If the plumes in their heads
Were the feathers of beds,
Never top could be sounder than they!

So, just wishing good night,
Bows Napoleon, polite;
But instead of a loyal endeavour
To reply with a cheer;
Not a sound met his ear,
Though each face seem'd to say ‘Nap for ever!’

THE OLD POLER'S WARNING

Come, messmates, attend to a warning,
From one who has gone through the whole;
And you'll never set sail, some fine morning,
To seek any sort of a Pole.
It's not for the icebergs and freezing,
Or dangers you'll have for to court,
It's the shocks very hard and unpleasing
You'll meet on returning to Port.

It's joyful to sail up the Channel,
And think of your girls and your wives,
Of the warming-pans, Wallsend and flannel,
To comfort the rest of your lives!
But Lord! you will look like a ninny
To find, when to shore you have got,
That Old England is turned into Guinea,
It feels so confoundedly hot!

The next thing is coming, in Wapping,
To houses you lived at before,
And you find there is no kind of stopping
Without open windows and door!
Then Poll, if dispos'd to be cruel,
Or got someone else in her grace,
She just chucks on a shovel of fuel,
And drives you smack out of the place!

There's Tomkins, that took for to grapple
With Methody Tracks at the Pole,
Is half crazy he can't go to chapel,
It's so like Calcutta's Black Hole!
And Block, tho' he's not a deceiver,
But knows what to marriage belongs,
His own wife he's oblig'd for to leave her,
Because of her pokers and tongs.

Myself, tho' I'm able at present
To bear with one friend at a time,
And my wife, if she makes herself pleasant,
At first I was plagued with the clime.
Like powder I flew from hot cinders,
And whistled for winds fore and aft,
While I set between two open winders
A-courting a cold thorough-draught!

The first time in bed I was shoven,
The moment I pillow'd my head,
O! I thought I had crept in an oven,
A-baking with all of the bread!

525

I soon left the blankets behind me,
And ran for a cooler retreat;—
But next morning the Justices fin'd me
For taking a snooze in the street!

Now, there was a chance for a feller!
No roof I could sleep under twice;
Till a Fishmonger let me his cellar,
Of course with the use of the ice.
But still, like old hermits in stories,
I found it a dullish concarn;
With no creature but maids and John Dories,
To listen to spinning a yarn!

Then wanting to see Black-Ey'd Susan,
I went to the Surrey with Sal;
And what next?—in the part most amusin',
I fainted away like a gal!
Well, there I was, stretch'd without motion,
No smells and no fans would suffice,
Till my natur at last gave a notion
To grab at a gentleman's ice!

Then, Messmates, attend to a warning
From one who has gone through the whole,
And you'll never set sail, some fine morning,
To seek any sort of a Pole.
It's not for the ice-bergs and freezing,
Or dangers you'll have for to court,
It's the shocks, very hard and unpleasing,
You'll meet on returning to port!

STANZAS COMPOSED IN A SHOWER-BATH

‘Drip, drip, drip—there's nothing here but dripping.’ —Remorse, by Coleridge.

Trembling, as Father Adam stood
To pull the stalk, before the Fall,
So I stand here, before the Flood,
On my own head the shock to call:
How like our predecessor's luck!
'Tis but to pluck—but needs some pluck!

Still thoughts of gasping like a pup
Will paralyse the nervous pow'r;
Now hoping it will yet hold up,
Invoking now the tumbling show'r;—
But, ah! the shrinking body loathes,
Without a parapluie or clothes!

‘Expect some rain about this time!’
My eyes are seal'd, my teeth are set—
But where's the Stoic so sublime
Can ring unmov'd, for wringing wet?
Of going hogs some folks talk big—
Just let them try the whole cold pig!

526

CLUBS TURNED UP BY A FEMALE HAND

‘Clubs! Clubs! part 'em! part 'em! Clubs! Clubs!’ —Ancient Cries of London.

Of all the modern schemes of Man,
That time has brought to bear,
A plague upon the wicked plan
That parts the wedded pair!
My female friends they all agree
They hardly know their hubs;
And heart and voice unite with me,
‘We hate the name of Clubs!’

One selfish course the Wretches keep;
They come at morning chimes,
To snatch a few short hours of sleep—
Rise—breakfast—read the Times—
Then take their hats, and post away,
Like Clerks or City scrubs,
And no one sees them all the day,—
They live, eat, drink, at Clubs!

On what they say, and what they do,
They close the Club-House gates;
But one may guess a speech or two,
Though shut from their debates:
‘The Cook's a hasher—nothing more
The Children noisy grubs—
A Wife's a quiz, and home's a bore’—
Yes,—that's the style at Clubs!

With Rundle, Dr. K., or Glasse,
And such Domestic Books,
They once put up—but now, alas!
It's hey! for foreign cooks!
‘When will you dine at home, my Dove?’
I say to Mister Stubbs,—
‘When Cook can make an omelette, love,—
An omelette like the Club's!’

Time was, their hearts were only placed
On snug domestic schemes,
The book for two—united taste,—
And such connubial dreams,—
Friends dropping in at close of day
To singles, doubles, rubs,—
A little music—then the tray—
And not a word of Clubs!

But former comforts they condemn;
French kickshaws they discuss,
They take their wine, the wine takes them,
And then they favour us:—
From some offence they can't digest,
As cross as bears with cubs,
Or sleepy, dull, and queer, at best—
That's how they come from Clubs!

It's very fine to say ‘Subscribe
To Andrews'—can't you read?’
When Wives, the poor neglected tribe,
Complain how they proceed!
They'd better recommend at once
Philosophy and tubs,—
A Woman need not be a dunce
To feel the wrong of Clubs.

A set of savage Goths and Picts,
Would seek us now and then—
They're pretty pattern-Benedicts
To guide our single men!
Indeed my daughters both declare
‘Their Beaux shall not be subs.
To White's, or Black's, or anywhere,—
They've seen enough of Clubs!’

They say, ‘without the marriage ties,
They can devote their hours
To catechize, or botanize—
Shells, Sunday Schools, and flow'rs—
Or teach a Pretty Poll new words,
Tend Covent-Garden shrubs,
Nurse dogs and chirp to little birds—
As Wives do since the Clubs.’

527

Alas! for those departed days
Of social wedded life,
When married folks had married ways,
And lived like Man and Wife!
Oh! Wedlock then was picked by none—
As safe a lock as Chubb's!
But couples, that should be as one,
Are now the Two of Clubs!

Of all the modern schemes of man
That time has brought to bear,
A plague upon the wicked plan
That parts the wedded pair!
My female friends they all allow
They meet with slights, and snubs,
And say, ‘They have no husbands now,—
They're married to their Clubs!’

A RISE AT THE FATHER OF ANGLING

TO MR. IZAAC WALTON, AT MR. MAJOR'S THE BOOKSELLER'S IN FLEET STREET

Mr. Walton, it's harsh to say it, but as a Parent I can't help wishing
You'd been hung before you publish'd your book, to set all the young people a fishing!
There's my Robert, the trouble I've had with him it surpasses a mortal's bearing,
And all thro' those devilish angling works—the Lord forgive me for swearing!
I thought he were took with the Morbus one day, I did with his nasty angle!
For ‘oh dear,’ says he, and burst out in a cry, ‘oh my gut is all got of a tangle!’
It's a shame to teach a young boy such words—whose blood wouldn't chill in their veins
To hear him, as I overheard him one day, a-talking of blowing out brains?
And didn't I quarrel with Sally the cook, and a precious scolding I give her,
‘How dare you,’ says I, ‘for to stench the whole house by keeping that stinking liver?’
Twas enough to breed a fever, it was! they smelt it next door at the Bagots',—
But it wasn't breeding no fever—not it! 'twas my son a-breeding of maggots!
I declare that I couldn't touch meat for a week, for it all seemed tainting and going,
And after turning my stomach so, they turned to blueflies, all buzzing and blowing;
Boys are nasty enough, goodness knows, of themselves, without putting live things in their craniums;
Well, what next? but he pots a whole cargo of worms along with my choice geraniums.
And another fine trick, tho' it wasn't found out, till the housemaid had given us warning,
He fished at the golden fish in the bowl, before we were up and down in the morning.
I'm sure it was lucky for Ellen, poor thing, that she'd got so attentive a lover,
As brings her fresh fish when the others deceas'd, which they did a dozen times over!

528

Then a whole new loaf was short! for I know, of course, when our bread goes faster,—
And I made a stir with the bill in my hand, and the man was sent off by his master;
But, oh dear, I thought I should sink thro' the earth, with the weight of my own reproaches,
For my own pretty son had made away with the loaf, to make pastry to feed the roaches!
I vow I've suffered a martyrdom—with all sorts of frights and terrors surrounded!
For I never saw him go out of the doors but I thought he'd come home to me drownded.
And, sure enough, I set out one fine Monday to visit my married daughter,
And there he was standing at Sadler's Wells, a-performing with real water.
It's well he was off on the further side, for I'd have brain'd him else with my patten,
For I thought he was safe at school, the young wretch! a studying Greek and Latin.
And my ridicule basket he'd got on his back, to carry his fishes and gentles;
With a belt I knew he'd made from the belt of his father's regimentals—
Well, I poked his rods and lines in the fire, and his father gave him a birching,
But he'd gone too far to be easy cured of his love for chubbing and perching.
One night he never came home to tea, and altho' it was dark and dripping,
His father set off to Wapping, poor man! for the boy had a turn for shipping;
As for me I set up, and I sobbed and I cried for all the world like a babby,
Till at twelve o'clock he rewards my fears with two gudging from Waltham Abbey!
And a pretty sore throat and fever he caught, that brought me a fortnight's hard nussing,
Till I thought I should go to my grey-hair'd grave, worn out with the fretting and fussing;
But at last he was cur'd, and we did have hopes that the fishing was cured as well,
But no such luck! not a week went by before we'd another such spell.
Tho' he never had got a penny to spend, for such was our strict intentions,
Yet he was soon set up in tackle again, for all boys have such quick inventions:
And I lost my Lady's Own Pocket Book, in spite of all my hunting and poking,
Till I found it chuck-full of tackles and hooks, and besides it had had a good soaking.
Then one Friday morning, I gets a summoning note from a sort of a law attorney,
For the boy had been trespassing people's grounds while his father was gone a journey,
And I had to go and hush it all up by myself, in an office at Hatton Garden;
And to pay for the damage he'd done, to boot, and to beg some strange gentleman's pardon.
And wasn't he once fish'd out himself, and a man had to dive to find him,
And I saw him brought home with my motherly eyes and a mob of people behind him?

529

Yes, it took a full hour to rub him to life—whilst I was a-screaming and raving,
And a couple of guineas it cost us besides, to reward the humane man for his saving,
And didn't Miss Crump leave us out of her will, all along of her taking dudgeon
At her favourite cat being chok'd, poor Puss, with a hook seow'd up in a gudgeon?
And old Brown complain'd that he pluck'd his live fowls, and not without show of reason,
For the cocks looked naked about necks and tails, and it wasn't their moulting season;
And sure and surely, when we came to enquire, there was cause for their screeching and cackles,
For the mischief confess'd he had picked them a bit, for I think he call'd them the hackles.
A pretty tussle we had about that! but as if it warn't picking enough,
When the winter comes on, to the muff-box I goes, just to shake out my sable muff—
‘O mercy!’ thinks I, ‘there's the moth in the house!’ for the fur was all gone in patches;
And then at Ellen's chinchilly I look, and its state of destruction just matches—
But it wasn't no moth, Mr. Walton, but flies—sham flies to go trolling and trouting,
For his father's great coat was all safe and sound, and that first set me a-doubting.
A plague, say I, on all rods and lines, and on young or old watery danglers!
And after all that you'll talk of such stuff as no harm in the world about anglers!
And when all is done, all our worry and fuss, why, we've never had nothing worth dishing;
So you see, Mister Walton, no good comes at last of your famous book about fishing.
As for Robert's, I burnt it a twelvemonth ago; but it turned up too late to be lucky,
For he'd got it by heart, as I found to the cost of

Your servant, Jane Elizabeth Stuckey.

Chewing and spitting out (bullocks') brains into the water for ground bait is called blowing of brains. —Salter's Angler's Guide.

THE FORLORN SHEPHERD'S COMPLAINT

AN UNPUBLISHED POEM, FROM SYDNEY

‘Vell! Here I am—no Matter how it suits
A-keeping Company with them dumb Brutes,
Old Park vos no bad Judge—confound his vig!
Of vot vood break the Sperrit of a Prig!

530

‘The like of Me, to come to New Sow Wales
To go a-tagging arter Vethers' Tails
And valk in Herbage as delights the Flock,
But stinks of Sweet Herbs vorser nor the Dock!

‘To go to set this solitary Job
To Von whose Vork vos alvay in a Mob!
It's out of all our Lines, for sure I am
Jack Shepherd even never kep a Lamb!

‘I arn't ashamed to say I sit and veep
To think of Seven Year of keepin Sheep,
The spooniest Beasts in Nater, all to Sticks,
And not a Votch to take for all their Ticks!

‘If I'd fore-seed how Transports vood turn out
To only Baa! and Botanize about,
I'd quite as leaf have had the t'other Pull,
And come to Cotton as to all this Vool!

‘Von only happy moment I have had
Since here I come to be a Farmer's Cad,
And then I cotch'd a vild Beast in a Snooze,
And pick'd her Pouch of three young Kangaroos!

‘Vot chance have I to go to Race or Mill?
Or show a sneaking Kindness for a Till;
And as for Vashings, on a hedge to dry,
I'd put the Natives' Linen in my Eye!

‘If this whole Lot of Mutton I could scrag,
And find a fence to turn it into Swag,
I'd give it all in Lonnon Streets to stand,
And if I had my pick, I'd say the Strand!

‘But ven I goes, as maybe vonce I shall,
To my old Crib to meet with Jack, and Sal,
I've been so gallows honest in this Place,
I shan't not like to show my sheepish Face.

‘It's wery hard for nothing but a Box
Of Irish Blackguard to be keepin' Flocks,
'Mong naked Blacks, sich Savages to hus,
They've nayther got a Pocket nor a Pus.

‘But Folks may tell their Troubles till they're sick
To dumb brute Beasts,—and so I'll cut my Stick!
And vot's the Use a Feller's Eyes to pipe
Vere von can't borrow any Gemman's Vipe?’

531

THE BEADLE'S ANNUAL ADDRESS

The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way—
And this is Christmas Eve, and here I be!

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
Save Queen Victoria, who the sceptre holds!

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain—
Save all the ministers that be in power,
Save all the Royal Sovereigns that reign!

Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure;
Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
The Parish Beadle calling at the door!

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life,
They kept the apple-woman's stalls away!

Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh;
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd
He never lets the children play thereby.

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn,
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
To meet the Reverend Vicar all in lawn!

One morn I miss'd him on the 'custom'd hill,
Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;
Another came, nor yet beside the rill,
Nor at the Magpie and the Stump was he!

The next with hat and staff, and new array,
Along all sorts of streets we saw him borne;
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
He always brings upon a Christmas morn!

533

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send;
He gave to misery (all he had) a tear,
And never failed on Sundays to attend!

No further seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode;
Where they alike in trembling hope repose,
John Bugsby, Number Thirteen, Tibbald's Road.

550

THE ASSISTANT DRAPERS' PETITION

‘Now's the time and now's the hour.’ —Burns.

‘Seven's the main.’ —Crockford.

Pity the sorrows of a class of men,
Who, though they bow to fashion and frivolity;
No fancied claims or woes fictitious pen,
But wrongs ell-wide, and of a lasting quality.

Oppress'd and discontented with our lot,
Amongst the clamorous we take our station
A host of Ribbon Men—yet is there not
One piece of Irish in our agitation.

We do revere Her Majesty the Queen,
We venerate our Glorious Constitution;
We joy King William's advent should have been,
And only want a Counter Revolution.

'Tis not Lord Russell and his final measure,
'Tis not Lord Melbourne's counsel to the throne,
'Tis not this Bill, or that gives us displeasure,
The measures we dislike are all our own.

The Cash Law the ‘Great Western’ loves to name,
The tone our foreign policy pervading;
The Corn Laws—none of these we care to blame,
Our evils we refer to over-trading.

By Tax or Tithe our murmurs are not drawn;
We reverence the Church—but hang the cloth!
We love her ministers—but curse the lawn!
We have, alas! too much to do with both!

We love the sex:—to serve them is a bliss!
We trust they find us civil, never surly;
All that we hope of female friends is this,
That their last linen may be wanted early.

Ah! who can tell the miseries of men
That serve the very cheapest shops in town?
Till faint and weary, they leave off at ten,
Knock'd up by ladies beating of 'em down!

But has not Hamlet his opinion given—
O Hamlet had a heart for Drapers' servants!
‘That custom is’—say custom after seven—
‘More honour'd in the breach than the observance.’

551

O come then, gentle ladies, come in time,
O'erwhelm our counters, and unload our shelves;
Torment us all until the seventh chime,
But let us have the remnant to ourselves

We wish of knowledge to lay in a stock,
And not remain in ignorance incurable;—
To study Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden, Locke,
And other fabrics that have proved so durable.

We long for thoughts of intellectual kind,
And not to go bewilder'd to our beds;
With stuff and fustian taking up the mind,
And pins and needles running in our heads!

For oh! the brain gets very dull and dry,
Selling from morn till night for cash or credit;
Or with a vacant face and vacant eye,
Watching cheap prints that Knight did never edit.

Till sick with toil, and lassitude extreme,
We often think, when we are dull and vapoury,
The bliss of Paradise was so supreme,
Because that Adam did not deal in drapery.

LORD DURHAM'S RETURN

‘On revient toujours.’ —French Song.

‘And will I see his face again,
And will I hear him speak?’
—There's nae Luck about the House.

‘The Inconstant is come!’
It's in every man's mouth;
From the East to the West,
From the North to the South;
With a flag at her head,
And a flag at her stern;
Whilst the Telegraph hints
At Lord Durham's return.

Turn wherever you will,
It's the great talk and small;
Going up to Cornhill,
Going down to Whitehall;
If you ask for the news,
It's the first you will learn,
And the last you will lose,
My Lord Durham's return.

The fat pig in the sty,
And the ox in the stall,
The old dog at the door,
And the cat in the wall;
The wild bird in the bush,
And the hare in the fern,
All appear to have heard
Of Lord Durham's return.

It has flown all abroad,
It is known to goose-pens,
It is bray'd by the ass,
It is cackled by hens:
The Pintadas, indeed,
Make it quite their concern,
All exclaiming, ‘Come back!’
At Lord Durham's return.

552

It's the text over wine,
And the talk after tea;
All are singing one tune,
Though not set in one key.
E'en the Barbers unite
Other gossip to spurn,
Whilst they lather away
At Lord Durham's return.

All the Painters leave off,
And the Carpenters go,
And the Tailor above
Joins the Cobbler below,
In whole gallons of beer
To expend what they earn
While discussing one pint,
My Lord Durham's return.

It is timed in the Times,
With the News has a run,
Goes the round of the Globe,
And is writ in the Sun,
Like the Warren on walls,
Fancy seems to discern,
In great letters of chalk,
‘Try Lord Durham's return!’

Not a murder comes out;
The reporters repine;
And a hanging is scarce
Worth a penny a line.
If a Ghost reappeared
With his funeral urn,
He'd be thrown in the shade
By Lord Durham's return.

No arrival could raise
Such a fever in town;
There's a talk about 'Change
Of the Stocks going down;
But the Butter gets up
Just as if in the churn,
It forgot it should come
In Lord Durham's return.

The most silent are loud;
The most sleepy awake;
Very odd that one man
Such a bustle can make!
But the schools all break up,
And both Houses adjourn,
To debate more at ease
On Lord Durham's return.

Is he well? is he ill?
Is he cheerful or sad?
Has he spoken his mind
Of the breeze that he had?
It was rather too soon
With home-sickness to yearn;
There will something come yet
Of Lord Durham's return.

There's a sound in the wind
Since that ship is come home;
There are signs in the air
Like the omens of Rome;
And the lamps in the street,
And the stars as they burn,
Seem to give a flare up
At Lord Durham's return!

VERSES MISTAKEN FOR AN INCENDIARY SONG

Come, all conflagrating fellows,
Let us have a glorious rig:
Sing old Rose, and burn the bellows!
Burn me, but I'll burn my wig!

Christmas time is all before us:
Burn all puddings, north and south.
Burn the Turkey—Burn the Devil!
Burn snap-dragon! burn your mouth!

Burn the coals! they're up at sixty!
Burn Burn's Justice—burn Old Coke.
Burn the chestnuts! Burn the shovel!
Burn a fire, and burn the smoke!

Burn burnt almonds. Burn burnt brandy.
Let all burnings have a turn.
Burn Chabert, the Salamander,—
Burn the man that wouldn't burn!

553

Burn the old year out, don't ring it;
Burn the one that must begin.
Burn Lang Syne; and, whilst you're burning,
Burn the burn he paidled in.

Burn the boxing! Burn the Beadle!
Burn the baker! Burn his man!
Burn the butcher—Burn the dustman,
Burn the sweeper, if you can!

Burn the Postman! burn the postage,
Burn the knocker—burn the bell!
Burn the folks that come for money!
Burn the bills—and burn 'em well.

Burn the Parish! Burn the rating!
Burn all taxes in a mass.
Burn the Paving! Burn the Lighting!
Burn the burners! Burn the gas!

Burn all candles, white or yellow—
Burn for war, and not for peace;
Burn the Czar of all the Tallow!
Burn the King of all the Greece!

Burn all canters—burn in Smithfield.
Burn Tea-Total hum and bug.
Burn his kettle, burn his water,
Burn his muffin, burn his mug!

Burn the breeks of meddling vicars,
Picking holes in Anna's Urns!
Burn all Steers's Opodeldoc,
Just for being good for burns.

Burn all Swindlers! Burn Asphaltum!
Burn the money-lenders down—
Burn all schemes that burn one's fingers!
Burn the Cheapest House in town!

Burn all bores and boring topics;
Burn Brunel—aye, in his hole!
Burn all subjects that are Irish!
Burn the niggers black as coal!

Burn all Boz's imitators!
Burn all tales without a head!
Burn a candle near the curtain!
Burn your Burns, and burn your bed!

Burn all wrongs that won't be righted,
Poor poor Soup, and Spanish claims—
Burn that Bell, and burn his Vixen!
Burn all sorts of burning shames!

Burn the Whigs! and burn the Tories!
Burn all parties, great and small!
Burn that everlasting Poynder—
Burn his Suttees once for all!

Burn the fop that burns tobacco.
Burn a Critic that condemns.—
Burn Lucifer and all his matches!
Burn the fool that burns the Thames!

Burn all burning agitators—
Burn all torch-parading elves!
And oh! burn Parson Stephen's speeches,
If they haven't burnt themselves.

POMPEY'S GHOST

A PATHETIC BALLAD

‘Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells in white and black the same.’
—Cowper.

'Twas twelve o'clock, not twelve at night,
But twelve o'clock at noon;
Because the sun was shining bright,
And not the silver moon.
A proper time for friends to call,
Or Pots, or Penny Post;
When, lo! as Phœbe sat at work,
She saw her Pompey's Ghost!

Now when a female has a call
From people, that are dead;
Like Paris ladies, she receives
Her visitors in bed.
But Pompey's Spirit could not come
Like spirits that are white,
Because he was a Blackamoor,
And wouldn't show at night!

But of all unexpected things
That happen to us here,
The most unpleasant is a rise
In what is very dear.
So Phœbe screamed an awful scream,
To prove the seaman's text:
That after black appearances,
White squalls will follow next.

559

‘Oh, Phœbe, dear! oh, Phœbe, dear!
Don't go to scream or faint;
You think because I'm black I am
The Devil, but I ain't!
Behind the heels of Lady Lambe
I walked whilst I had breath;
But that is past, and I am now
A-walking after Death!

‘No, murder, though, I come to tell
By base and bloody crime;
So Phœbe, dear, put off your fits
Till some more fitting time:
No Crowner, like a boatswain's mate,
My body need attack,
With his round dozen to find out
Why I have died so black.

‘One Sunday, shortly after tea,
My skin began to burn
As if I had in my inside
A heater, like the urn.
Delirious in the night I grew,
And as I lay in bed,
They say I gather'd all the wool
You see upon my head.

‘His Lordship for his doctor sent,
My treatment to begin—
I wish that he had call'd him out,
Before he call'd him in!
For though to physic he was bred,
And pass'd at Surgeons' Hall,
To make his post a sinecure,
He never cured at all!

‘The Doctor look'd about my breast,
And then about my back,
And then he shook his head and said,
“Your case looks very black.”
And first he sent me hot cayenne,
And then gamboge to swallow,—
But still my Fever would not turn
To Scarlet or to Yellow!

‘With madder and with turmeric
He made his next attack;
But neither he nor all his drugs
Could stop my dying black.
At last I got so sick of life,
And sick of being dosed,
One Monday morning I gave up
My physic and the ghost!

‘Oh, Phœbe, dear, what pain it was
To sever every tie!
You know black beetles feel as much
As giants when they die—
And if there is a bridal bed,
Or bride of little worth,
It's lying in a bed of mould,
Along with Mother Earth.

‘Alas; some happy, happy day,
In church I hoped to stand,
And like a muff of sable skin
Receive your lily hand;
But sternly with that piebald match
My fate untimely clashes—
For now, like Pompe-double-i,
I'm sleeping in my ashes!

‘And now farewell! a last farewell!
I'm wanted down below,
And have but time enough to add
One word before I go—
In mourning crape and bombazine
Ne'er spend your precious pelf—
Don't go in black for me,—for I
Can do it for myself.

‘Henceforth within my grave I rest,
But Death, who there inherits,
Allowed my spirit leave to come,
You seemed so out of spirits:
But do not sigh, and do not cry,
By grief too much engross'd,—
Nor, for a ghost of colour, turn
The colour of a ghost!

‘Again farewell, my Phœbe dear!
Once more a last adieu!
For I must make myself as scarce
As swans of sable hue.’
From black to gray, from gray to nought,
The Shape began to fade,—
And, like an egg, though not so white,
The Ghost was newly laid!

560

AN OPEN QUESTION

‘It is the king's highway that we are in, and in this way it is that thou hast placed the lions.’ —Bunyan.

What! shut the Gardens! lock the lattic'd gate!
Refuse the shilling and the Fellow's ticket!
And hang a wooden notice up to state,
‘On Sundays no admittance at this wicket!’
The Birds, the Beasts, and all the Reptile race
Denied to friends and visitors till Monday!
Now, really, this appears the common case
Of putting too much Sabbath into Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

The Gardens,—so unlike the ones we dub
Of Tea, wherein the artisan carouses,—
Mere shrubberies without one drop of shrub,—
Wherefore should they be closed like public-houses?
No ale is vended at the wild Deer's Head,—
Nor rum—nor gin—not even of a Monday—
The Lion is not carv'd—or gilt—or red,
And does not send out porter of a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

The Bear denied! the Leopard under locks!
As if his spots would give contagious fevers,
The Beaver close as hat within its box,
So different from other Sunday beavers!
The Birds invisible—the Gnaw-way Rats—
The Seal hermetically sealed till Monday—
The Monkey tribe—the Family of Cats,—
We visit other families on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

What is the brute profanity that shocks
The super-sensitively-serious feeling?
The Kangaroo—is he not orthodox
To bend his legs, the way he does, in kneeling?
Was strict Sir Andrew, in his Sabbath coat,
Struck all a heap to see a Coati Mundi?
Or did the Kentish Plumtree faint to note
The Pelicans presenting bills on Sunday?
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

What feature has repulsed the serious set?
What error in the bestial birth or breeding,
To put their tender fancies on the fret—?
One thing is plain—it is not in the feeding!

561

Some stiffish people think that smoking joints
Are carnal sins 'twixt Saturday and Monday—
But then the beasts are pious on these points,
For they all eat cold dinners on a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

What change comes o'er the spirit of the place,
As if transmuted by some spell organic?
Turns fell Hyæna of the Ghoulish race?
The Snake, pro tempore, the true Satanic?
Do Irish minds,—(whose theory allows
That now and then Good Friday falls on Monday)—
Do Irish minds suppose that Indian Cows
Are wicked Bulls of Bashan on a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

There are some moody Fellows, not a few,
Who, turn'd by Nature with a gloomy bias,
Renounce black devils to adopt the blue,
And think when they are dismal they are pious—
Is't possible that Pug's untimely fun
Has sent the brutes to Coventry till Monday—
Or p'rhaps some animal, no serious one,
Was overheard in laughter on a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

What dire offence have serious fellows found
To raise their spleen against the Regent's spinney?
Were charitable boxes handed round,
And would not Guinea Pigs subscribe their guinea?
Perchance the Demoiselle refused to moult
The feathers in her head—at least till Monday;
Or did the Elephant, unseemly, bolt
A tract presented to be read on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

At whom did Leo struggle to get loose?
Who mourns thro' Monkey tricks his damag'd clothing?
Who has been hissed by the Canadian Goose?
On whom did Llama spit in utter loathing?
Some Smithfield Saint did jealous feelings tell
To keep the Puma out of sight till Monday,
Because he prey'd extempore as well
As certain wild Itinerants on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

To me it seems, that in the oddest way
(Begging the pardon of each rigid Socius)
Our would-be Keepers of the Sabbath-day
Are like the Keepers of the brutes ferocious—

562

As soon the Tiger might expect to stalk
About the grounds from Saturday till Monday,
As any harmless Man to take a walk,
If Saints could clap him in a cage on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

In spite of all hypocrisy can spin,
As surely as I am a Christian scion,
I cannot think it is a mortal sin—
(Unless he's loose) to look upon a lion.
I really think that one may go, perchance,
To see a bear, as guiltless as on Monday—
(That is, provided that he did not dance)
Bruin's no worse than bakin' on a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

In spite of all the fanatic compiles,
I cannot think the day a bit diviner,
Because no children, with forestalling smiles,
Throng, happy, to the gates of Eden Minor—
It is not plain, to my poor faith at least,
That what we christen ‘Natural’ on Monday,
The wondrous history of Bird and Beast,
Can be Unnatural because it's Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

Whereon is sinful phantasy to work?
The Dove,—the wing'd Columbus of Man's haven?
The tender Love-bird—or the filial Stork?
The punctual Crane—the providential Raven?
The Pelican whose bosom feeds her young?
Nay, must we cut from Saturday till Monday
That feather'd marvel with a human tongue,
Because she does not preach upon a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

The busy Beaver—that sagacious beast!
The Sheep that own'd an Oriental Shepherd—
That Desert-ship the Camel of the East,
The horned Rhinoceros—the spotted Leopard—
The creatures of the Great Creator's hand
Are surely sights for better days than Monday—
The Elephant, although he wears no band,
Has he no sermon in his trunk for Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

What harm if men who burn the midnight-oil,
Weary of frame, and worn and wan in feature,
Seek once a-week their spirits to assoil,
And snatch a glimpse of ‘Animated Nature’?

563

Better it were, if, in his best of suits,
The artisan, who goes to work on Monday,
Should spend a leisure hour amongst the brutes,
Than make a beast of his own self on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

Why, zounds! what raised so Protestant a fuss
(Omit the zounds! for which I make apology)
But that the Papists, like some Fellows, thus
Had somehow mixed up Dens with their theology?
Is Brahma's Bull—a Hindoo god at home—
A papal Bull to be tied up till Monday—
Or Leo, like his namesake, Pope of Rome,
That there is such a dread of them on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

Spirit of Kant! have we not had enough
To make Religion sad, and sour, and snubbish,
But Saints Zoological must cant their stuff,
As vessels cant their ballast—rattling rubbish!
Once let the sect, triumphant to their text,
Shut Nero up from Saturday till Monday,
And sure as fate they will deny us next
To see the Dandelions on a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

ON A LATE IMMERSION

Long Life and hard frosts to the fortunate Prince!
And for many a skating may Providence spare him!
For surely his accident served to evince
That the Queen dearly loved, tho' the ice couldn't bear him!

614

A BULL

One day, no matter where or when,
Except 'twas after some Hibernian revel,
For why? an Irishman is ready then
‘To play the Devil’—
A Pat, whose surname has escaped the Bards,
Agreed to play with Nick a game at Cards.

The stake, the same that the old Source of Sin
From German Faustus and his German cousins
Had won by dozens;
The only one in fact he cares a pin
To win.

By luck or roguery of course Old Nick Won ev'ry trick;
The score was full, the last turn-up had done it—
‘Your soul—I've won it!’

‘It's true for you I've lost that same,’
Said Pat a little hazy in his wits—
‘My soul is yours—but come, another game—
Double, or quits!’

A REFLECTION

When Eve upon the first of Men
The apple press'd with specious cant
Oh! what a thousand pities then
That Adam was not Adamant!

ON A ROYAL DEMISE

How Monarchs die is easily explain'd,
And thus it might upon the Tomb be chisel'd,
‘As long as George the Fourth could reign he reign'd,
And then he mizzled.’

THE PURSUIT OF LETTERS

The Germans for Learning enjoy great repute;
But the English make Letters still more a pursuit;
For a Cockney will go from the banks of the Thames
To Cologne for an O and to Nassau for M's.

615

EPIGRAM

After such years of dissension and strife,
Some wonder that Peter should weep for his wife:
But his tears on her grave are nothing surprising,—
He's laying her dust, for fear of its rising.

NIGHT-SONG—WRITTEN AT SEA

'Tis night—my bark is on the ocean,
No sound I hear, no sight I see,
Not e'en the darkened waves whose motion
Still bears me, Fanny! far from thee;—
But from the misty skies are gleaming
Two smiling stars that look, my love,
As if thine eyes, though veiled, were beaming
Benignly on me from above.
Good-night and bless thee, Fanny dearest!
Nor let the sound disturb thy sleep,
If when the midnight wind thou hearest,
Thy thoughts are on the distant deep.

Thy lover there is safe and fearless,
For heaven still guards and guides his track,
Nor can his dreaming heart be cheerless,
For still to thee 'tis wafted back.

616

'Tis sweet on the benighted billow
To trust in Him whom all adore;
'Tis sweet to think that from her pillow
Her prayers for me shall Fanny pour.
The wind, self-lullabied, is dozing,
The winking stars withdraw their light,
Fanny! methinks thine eyes are closing,
Bless thee, my love! Good night, good night!

RONDEAU

To-day it is my natal day,
And threescore years have pass'd away,
While Time has turn'd to silver grey
My hairs.

Pursuing pleasure, love, and fun,
A longish course I've had to run,
And, thanks to Fortune, I have won
My hares.

But now, exhausted in the race,
No longer I can go the pace,
And others must take up the chase—
My heirs!

EPIGRAM

ON A CERTAIN HERO AND HEROINE

In raising names to noble rank
Not always true desert prevails;
But Honour's self may take delight
In hoisting such top-gallant Sales!

SKIPPING. A MYSTERY

Little Children skip,
The rope so gaily gripping,
Tom and Harry,
Jane and Mary,
Kate, Diana,
Susan, Anna,
All are fond of skipping!

The Grasshoppers all skip,
The early dew-drop sipping,
Under, over,
Bent and clover,
Daisy, sorrel,
Without quarrel,
All are fond of skipping!

The tiny Fairies skip,
At midnight softly tripping;
Puck and Peri,
Never weary,
With an antic
Quite romantic,
All are fond of skipping.

The little Boats they skip,
Beside the heavy Shipping
While the squalling
Winds are calling,
Falling, rising,
Rising, falling,
All are fond of skipping!

The pale Diana skips,
The silver billows tipping,
With a dancing
Lustre glancing
To the motion
Of the ocean—
All are fond of skipping!

The little Flounders skip,
When they feel the dripping;
Scorching, frying,
Jumping, trying
If there is not
Any shying,
All are fond of skipping!

638

The very Dogs they skip,
While threatened with a whipping,
Wheeling, prancing,
Learning dancing,
To a measure,
What a pleasure!
All are fond of skipping!

The little fleas they skip,
And nightly come a nipping,
Lord and Lady,
Jude and Thady,
In the night
So dark and shady—
All are fond of skipping!

The Autumn Leaves they skip;
When blasts the trees are stripping;
Bounding, whirling,
Sweeping, twirling,
And in wanton
Mazes curling,
All are fond of skipping!

The Apparitions skip,
Some mortal grievance ripping,
Thorough many
A crack and cranny,
And the keyhole
Good as any—
All are fond of skipping!

But oh! how Readers skip,
In heavy volumes dipping!
***** and *****
**** and *****
*** and *****
********
All are fond of skipping!

A DREAM

'Twas night: the Globe was folded up,
(The paper, not the earth,)
And to its proper shelf restored
The fairest ‘Maid of Perth:’
But still with strange intricacy
The things that I had read—
The Irish News, the Scottish Tale—
Kept running in my head;
While over all a sort of mist
Began to slowly creep,
The twilight haze of Thought before
It darkens into Sleep;
A foggy land where shady shapes
Kept stirring in the gloom,
Till with a hint of brighter tint
One spot began to bloom,
And on the blank, by dreamy prank,
I saw a Figure tall,
As vivid as from painted glass,
Projected on a wall!

The face, as well as I could trace,
Two sparkling eyes were there,
Black as the beard, and trim moustache,
And curly head of hair;
The nose was straight, the mouth was large,
The lips disclosed beneath
A set full white and regular,
Of strong and handsome teeth—
The whiter, that his brow, and cheek,
And thick uncover'd gorge,
Were ruddy as if baked by heat
Of sun or glowing forge.

His dress was buff, or some such stuff,
And belted at the waist;
A curious dirk, for stabbing work,
Was in the girdle placed,
Beside a sort of pouch or purse
Of some wild creature's skin,
To safely hold his store of gold
Or silver coin therein;—
But—suddenly his doublet changed
To one of brighter hue,
A jerkin fair and superfine,
Of cloth of azure blue,
Slash'd front and back with satin black,
Embroider'd o'er, and laced
With sable silk, as used to suit
The ancient time and taste;
His hose were of the Flemish cut,
His boots of cordovan;
A velvet bonnet on his head,
Like that of Scottish man,—
Nay, not a velvet one,—for why,
As dreams are apt to deal,
With sudden change, as swift as strange,
It shone a cap of steel!
His coat of buff, or azure stuff,
Became a hauberk bright,
No longer gay in his array,
But harness'd for the Fight!

Huge was his frame and muscular,
Indicative of strength:
His bosom broad, his brawny arms
Of more than common length;
And well the sturdy limbs might be
So sinewy, stark, and strong,
That had to wield in battle-field
A sword so broad and long!
Few men there were of mortal mould,
Although of warlike trade,
But had been rash to stand the clash
Of that tremendous blade;
And yet aloft he swung it oft,
As if of feather-weight,
And cut amid the empty air
A monstrous figure eight;
Whilst ever as it cleft the wind,
A whisper came therewith,
That low and clear said in my ear,
‘Behold the Fighting Smith!’

And lo! another 'change came o'er
The spirit of my dream:’
The hauberk bright no longer shone
With that metallic gleam—

644

No ruddy visage furnace-scorched,
With glowing eyes, was there,
No sable beard, nor trim moustache,
Nor head of raven hair;
No steely cap, with plume mayhap,
No bonnet small or big;
Upon his brow there settled now
A curly powder'd Wig!
Beneath his chin two cambric bands
Demurely drooped adown;
And from his brawny shoulders hung
A black forensic gown.

No mail beneath, to guard from death,
Or wounds in battle dealt,
Nor ready dirk for stabbing work,
Dependent at his belt—
His right hand bore no broad claymore,
But, with a flourish, soon
He wav'd a Pistol huge enough
For any horse-dragoon,
And whilst he pointed to and fro,
As if to aim therewith,
Still in my ear, the voice was clear,
‘Behold the Fighting Smith!’

Vide Scott's ‘Fair Maid of Perth.’

Vide ‘The State Trials in Ireland.’

THE CAPTAIN'S COW

A NAUTICAL ROMANCE

‘Water, water everywhere,
But not a drop to drink.’
—Coleridge.

It is a jolly Mariner
As ever knew the billows' stir,
Or battled with the gale;
His face is brown, his hair is black,
And down his broad gigantic back
There hangs a platted tail.

In clusters, as he rolls along,
His tarry mates around him throng,
Who know his budget well;
Betwixt Canton and Trinidad
No Sea-Romancer ever had
Such wondrous tales to tell!

Against the mast he leans a-slope,
And thence upon a coil of rope
Slides down his pitchy ‘starn;’
Heaves up a lusty hem or two,
And then at once without ado
Begins to spin his yarn:—

‘As from Jamaica we did come,
Laden with sugar, fruit and rum,
It blew a heavy gale:
A storm that scar'd the oldest men
For three long days and nights, and then
The wind began to fail.

‘Still less and less, till on the mast
The sails began to flap at last,
The breezes blew so soft;
Just only now and then a puff,
Till soon there was not wind enough
To stir the vane aloft.

647

‘No, not a cat's paw anywhere:
Hold up your finger in the air
You couldn't feel a breath;
For why, in yonder storm that burst,
The wind that blew so hard at first
Had blown itself to death.

‘No cloud aloft to throw a shade;
No distant breezy ripple made
The ocean dark below.
No cheering sign of any kind;
The more we whistled for the wind
The more it did not blow.

‘The hands were idle, one and all;
No sail to reef against a squall;
No wheel, no steering now!
Nothing to do for man or mate,
But chew their cuds and ruminate,
Just like the Captain's Cow.

‘Day after day, day after day,
Becalm'd the Jolly Planter lay,
As if she had been moor'd:
The sea below, the sky a-top
Fierce blazing down, and not a drop
Of water left aboard!

‘Day after day, day after day,
Becalm'd the Jolly Planter lay,
As still as any log;
The parching seamen stood about,
Each with his tongue a-lolling out,
And panting like a dog—

‘A dog half mad with summer heat
And running up and down the street,
By thirst quite overcome;
And not a drop in all the ship
To moisten cracking tongue and lip,
Except Jamaica rum!

‘The very poultry in the coop
Began to pine away and droop—
The cock was first to go!
And glad we were on all our part
He used to damp our very hearts
With such a ropy crow.

‘But worst it was, we did allow,
To look upon the Captain's Cow,
That daily seemed to shrink:
Deprived of water hard or soft,
For though we tried her oft and oft,
The brine she wouldn't drink;

‘But only turn'd her bloodshot eye
And muzzle up towards the sky,
And gave a moan of pain,
A sort of hollow moan and sad,
As if some brutish thought she had
To pray to heav'n for rain;

‘And sometimes with a steadfast stare
Kept looking at the empty air,
As if she saw, beyond,
Some meadow in her native land,
Where formerly she used to stand
A-cooling in the pond.

‘If I had only had a drink
Of water then, I almost think
She would have had the half;
But as for John the Carpenter,
He couldn't more have pitied her
If he had been her calf.

‘So soft of heart he was and kind
To any creature lame, or blind,
Unfortunate or dumb:
Whereby he made a sort of vow,
In sympathising with the Cow,
To give her half his rum;—

‘An oath from which he never swerv'd,
For surely as the rum was serv'd
He shared the cheering dram;
And kindly gave one half at least,
Or more, to the complaining beast,
Who took it like a lamb.

‘At last with overclouding skies
A breeze again began to rise,
That stiffen'd to a gale:
Steady, steady, and strong it blew;
And were not we a joyous crew,
As on the Jolly Planter flew
Beneath a press of sail!

‘Swiftly the Jolly Planter flew,
And were not we a joyous crew,
At last to sight the land!
A glee there was on every brow,
That like a Christian soul the Cow
Appear'd to understand.

648

‘And was not she a mad-like thing,
To land again and taste the spring,
Instead of fiery glass:
About the verdant meads to scour,
And snuff the honey'd cowslip flower,
And crop the juicy grass!

‘Whereby she grew as plump and hale
As any beast that wears a tail,
Her skin as sleek as silk;
And through all parts of England now
Is grown a very famous Cow,
By giving Rum-and-Milk!’

AN EXPLANATION

BY ONE OF THE LIVERY

Says Blue-and-Buff, to Drab-and-Pink,
‘I've heard the hardest word, I think,
That ever posed me since my teens,
I wonder what As-best-os means!’

Says Drab-and-Pink to Blue-and-Buff,
‘The word is clear, and plain enough.
It means a Nag wot goes the pace,
And so as best os wins the race.’

651

EPIGRAM ON DR. ROBERT ELLIOT OF CAMBERWELL.

Whatever Doctor Robert's skill be worth,
One hope within me still is stout and hearty,
He would not kill me till the 24th
For fear of my appearing at his party!

May 23, 1844.

EPIGRAM ON A CERTAIN EQUESTRIAN STATUE

Whoever has looked upon Wellington's breast,
Knows well that he is not so full in the chest;
But the sculptor, to humour the Londoners partial,
Has turn'd the lean Duke to a plump City Marshal.

EPIGRAM ON THE NEW HALF-FARTHINGS

‘Too small for any marketable shift,
What purpose can there be for coins like these?’
Hush, hush, good Sir!—Thus charitable Thrift
May give a Mite to him who wants a cheese!

EPIGRAM

[Charm'd with a drink which Highlanders compose]

Charm'd with a drink which Highlanders compose,
A German traveller exclaim'd with glee,—
‘Potztausend! sare, if dis is Athol Brose,
How goot dere Athol Boetry must be!’

EPIGRAM

[When would-be Suicides in purpose fail—]

When would-be Suicides in purpose fail—
Who could not find a morsel though they needed—
If Peter sends them for attempts to jail,
What would he do to them if they succeeded?

655

THE LARK AND THE ROOK

A FABLE

‘Lo! hear the gentle lark!’ —Shakspeare.

Once on a time—no matter where—
A lark took such a fancy to the air,
That though he often gaz'd beneath,
Watching the breezy down, or heath,
Yet very, very seldom he was found
To perch upon the ground.

Hour after hour,
Through ev'ry change of weather hard or soft,
Through sun and shade, and wind and show'r,
Still fluttering aloft;
In silence now, and now in song,
Up, up in cloudland all day long,
On weary wing, yet with unceasing flight,
Like to those Birds of Paradise, so rare,
Fabled to live, and love, and feed in air,
But never to alight.

It caused, of course, much speculation
Among the feather'd generation;
Who tried to guess the riddle that was in it—
The robin puzzled at it, and the wren,
The swallows, cock and hen,
The wagtail, and the linnet,
The yellowhammer, and the finch as well—
The sparrow ask'd the tit, who couldn't tell,
The jay, the pie—but all were in the dark,
Till out of patience with the common doubt,
The Rook at last resolv'd to worm it out
And thus accosted the mysterious Lark:—
‘Friend, prithee, tell me why
You keep this constant hovering so high,
As if you had some castle in the air,
That you are always poising there,
A speck against the sky—
Neglectful of each old familiar feature
Of Earth that nurs'd you in your callow state—
You think you're only soaring at heaven's gate,
Whereas you're flying in the face of Nature!’

‘Friend,’ said the Lark, with melancholy tone,
And in each little eye a dewdrop shone,
‘No creature of my kind was ever fonder
Of that dear spot of earth
Which gave it birth—
And I was nestled in the furrow yonder!
Sweet is the twinkle of the dewy heath,
And sweet that thymy down I watch beneath,
Saluted often with a loving sonnet:
But Men, vile Men, have spread so thick a scurf
Of dirt and infamy about the Turf,
I do not like to settle on it!’

MORAL.

Alas! how Nobles of another race
Appointed to the bright and lofty way
Too willingly descend to haunt a place
Polluted by the deeds of Birds of Prey!

656

SUGGESTIONS BY STEAM

When Woman is in rags, and poor,
And sorrow, cold, and hunger teaze her,
If Man would only listen more
To that small voice that crieth—‘Ease her!’

Without the guidance of a friend,
Though legal sharks and screws attack her,
If Man would only more attend
To that small voice that crieth—‘Back her!’

So oft it would not be his fate
To witness some despairing dropper
In Thames's tide, and run too late
To that small voice that crieth—‘Stop her!’

ANACREONTIC

[_]

BY A FOOTMAN

It's wery well to talk in praise
Of Tea and Water-drinking ways,
In proper time and place;
Of sober draughts, so clear and cool,
Dipp'd out of a transparent pool
Reflecting heaven's face.

Of babbling brooks, and purling rills,
And streams as gushes from the hills,
It's wery well to talk;—
But what becomes of all sich schemes,
With ponds of ice, and running streams,
As doesn't even walk?

When Winter comes with piercing cold,
And all the rivers, new or old,
Is frozen far and wide;
And limpid springs is solid stuff,
And crystal pools is hard enough
To skate upon and slide;—

What then are thirsty men to do,
But drink of ale, and porter too,
Champagne as makes a fizz;
Port, sherry, or the Rhenish sort,
And p'rhaps a drop of summut short—
The water-pipes is friz!

THE SURPLICE QUESTION

[_]

BY A BENEDICT

A very pretty public stir
Is making, down at Exeter,
About the surplice fashion:
And many bitter words and rude
Have been bestow'd upon the feud,
And much unchristian passion.
For me I neither know nor care
Whether a Parson ought to wear
A black dress or a white dress;
Fill'd with a trouble of my own,—
A Wife who preaches in her gown,
And lectures in her night-dress!

EPIGRAM

['Tis said of Lord B., none is keener than he]

'Tis said of Lord B., none is keener than he
To spit a Wild Boar with éclât;
But he never gets near to the Brute with his spear,
He gives it so very much law.

TO MY DEAR MARIANNE

THIS FIRST SONNET

If kindly words could warm th' unkindly air
To summer clemency, that there might be
A constant atmosphere of love with thee,
Won by a constancy of tender care,—
Then thy most delicate cheek should ever wear
An exquisite blush, red-ripening to the glee
Of cheerful lips; and my contentment see
Its wish so recognised and written there:
So much my bosom clings to thee and feels
A painful echo of thy bosom pains;
The patient paleness of thy cheek so steals
With more than chill of Winter to my veins;
And conscious sympathy of blood reveals
The tender Brother-hood that now obtains!

[SONG]

[The Summer—the Summer—]

The Summer—the Summer—
Is beautiful and green;—
But when its leaves are fallen off
Who'd know that it had been,—
Its dewy buds,—its scented flow'rs—
Its fair and sunny mien,
If honey were not stored up
And harvest left to glean?

So beauty,—so beauty
Will wither and away;—
And what is left to charm us when
The flower's in decay,—
To cheer our hearts and feast our souls
And bless Affection's sway,—
But that love gave us all its sweets
Whilst Beauty had its day?

Then Winter,—then Winter
But sees us more than kind;—
Tho' Age hath soil'd the surface charm
Where first the eye reclin'd.
But love lies deeper at the core,
Like words the woodmen find
Deep graven in the hearts of trees
That once were on the rind.

[WRITTEN ON THE BACK OF THE FOREGOING]

Give me a pen that's charg'd with dews
Fresh gather'd from the morning rose,
And let it stain my page with hues
As bright as kernel buds enclose.
In common ink shall I indite,
With ink that dates the felon's doom,
That forges bonds,—no, let me write
My bloomy thoughts in tints of bloom.

661

[FRAGMENT]

(EVIDENTLY SUPPOSED TO BE SPOKEN BY MRS. REYNOLDS, MOTHER OF THE POET'S WIFE)

Mary, I believ'd you quick
But you're as deaf as any beedle;
See where you have left the plates;
You've an eye, and so's a needle.
Why an't Anne behind the door,
Standing ready with her dishes,
No one ever had such maids
Always thwarting all my wishes,
Marianne set up that child—
And where's her pinafore—call Mary,
The frock I made her will be spoil'd—
Now Lizzy don't be so contrary,
Hand round the bread—‘Thank God for what—’
It's done to rags! How wrong of Ann now,—
The dumplings too are hard as read
And plates stone-cold—but that's her plan now—
Mary, a knock—now Hood take that—
Or go without—Why, George, you're wanted,
Where is that Lotte? Call her down
She knows there's no white wine decanted—
Put to the door, we always dine
In public—

Jane take that cover off the greens;
Our earthen ware they play the deuce to;
Here's Mr. Green without a fork—
And I've no plate—but that I'm used to.—

SIR JOHN BOWRING

To Bowring, man of many tongues,
(All over tongues like rumour)
This tributary verse belongs
To paint his learned humour;
All kinds of gabs he talks, I wis,
From Latin down to Scottish;
As fluent as a parrot is,
But far more Polly-glottish!
No grammar too abstruse he meets
However dark and verby,—
He gossips Greek about the streets,
And often Russ—in urbe—:
Strange tongues whate'er you do them call,
In short the man is able
To tell you what's o'clock in all
The dialects of Babel.
Take him on 'Change; try Portuguese,
The Moorish and the Spanish,
Polish, Hungarian, Tyrolese,
The Swedish and the Danish;
Try him with these and fifty such,
His skill will ne'er diminish,
Although you should begin in Dutch
And end (like me) in Finnish.

FRAGMENTS

Jove's Eagle Asleep

I saw, through his eyelids, the might of his eyes.

River of Life

Those waters you hear,
Yet see not—they flow so invisibly clear.

Night

Shedder of secret tears
Felt upon unseen pillows—shade of Death!

The Sun and Moon

Father of light—and she, its mother mild.

The Moon

Sometimes she riseth from her shroud
Like the pale apparition of a sun.

674

Mercury

That bantam Mercury, with feathered heels.

A Lady

She sighed
And paleness came, like moonlight, o'er her face.

She was like an angel in mosaic,
Made up of many-coloured virtues.

A friendless heart is like a hollow shell,
That sighs o'er its own emptiness.

He lay with a dead passion on his face,
Like a storm stiffen'd in ice.

Sometimes Hope
Singeth so plaintively, 'tis like Despair.

Her smile can make dull Melancholy grow
Transparent to the secret hope below.

Morning

Surely this is the birthday of no grief
That dawns so pleasantly along the skies!

The lusty Morn
Cometh, all flushed, and singing, from a feast
Of wine and music in the odorous East

The sun unglues
The crimson leaves of Morning, that doth lie,
Like a streaked rosebud in the orient sky.