THE MERMAID.
(By a disgusted Tar with a vague recollection of TENNYSON.)
I.
Who would be
A Mermaid dank.
Bobbing about
In a sort of tank,
For the crowd to see
At a shilling a head,
In doubt if it be
Alive or dead?
II.
I would not be a Mermaid dank,
Flopping about in a Westminster tank,
Like a shabby sham at a country fair,
And by far the ugliest monster there;
Exposed to the Cockneys' vulgar chaff,
And the learned gush of the Daily T.,
To be called a porpoise or ocean-calf,
Or a seven-foot slug from the deep blue sea.
Me a Manatee? Dickens a bit!
The Mermaid of fiction was something fine,
A fish-tailed Siren given to sit
On a handy rock, 'midst the breezy brine,
Each golden curl with a comb of pearl
Arranging in many a taking twirl,
Like a free-and-easy nautical girl.
Taking a bath in a primitive style
Without any bother of dress or machine,
And likely the wandering tar to beguile,
If that Mariner chanced to be anyways green.
But your Modern Mermaid! good gracious me!
Who'd be inwiggled away from his tracks
Or driven to bung up his ears with wax
By the wiles and smiles of a Manatee?
A sort of shapeless squab sea-lubber,
A blundering bulk of leather and blubber,
Like an overgrown bottle of India-rubber;
The clumsiest, wobblingest, queerest of creatures,
With nothing but small gimlet-holes for features.
This a Mermaid? Oh, don't tell me!
It's simply some sly scientifical spree,
And I mean to say it's a thundering shame
To bestow the Siren's respectable name,
Which savours of all that is rare and romantic,
On such a preposterous monster as this is,
Whose hideous phiz and ridiculous antic,
Would simply have frightened the mates of Ulysses.
Fancy the horror of blubberous kisses
From a mouth that's like a tarpaulin flap!
That Merman must be a most amorous chap
Who would sue her and woo her under the sea.
As TENNYSON sings—a nice treat it would be
Were a Mermaid merely a Manatee!
From Punch, July 20th, 1878, in reference to the so-called Mermaid then being exhibited at the Westminster Aquarium.
Tennyson's—The Poet—was in fourteen verses of four lines each; it commenced thus:—
"The poet in a golden clime was born,
With golden stars above;
Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love."
"He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill,
He saw thro' his own soul.
The marvel of the everlasting will,
An open scroll,"
"Before him lay; with echoing feet he threaded
The secretest walks of fame:
The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed
And wing'd with flame."
The following parody, which appeared in Punch, was apropos of the poetry of the so-called "Fleshly School," and very closely follows the diction of the original:—