THE POET (OF THE PERIOD).
With Punch's apologies for the application of noble Stanzas to an ignoble subject.
THE Poet in a dismal clime was born,
With lurid stars above;
Dower'd with a taste for hate, a love for scorn,
A scorn for love.
He glanced through life and death, through good and ill,
He glanced through his own soul;
And found all dead as a dishonoured bill,
Or emptied bowl.
He thrummed his lay; with mincing feet he threaded
The walks of coterie fame:
On the dull arrows of his thought were threaded
Concetti tame
And pop-gun pellets from his lisping tongue,
Erratic in their flight,
From studio to drawing-room he flung,
Filling with light
And mazèd phantasies each morbid mind,
Which, albeit lacking wit,
Like dandelion seeds blown by the wind,
In weak souls lit,
Took shallow root, and springing up anew
Where'er they dropt, behold,
Like to the parent plant in semblance, grew
A weed as bold,
And fitly furnished all abroad to fling
Fresh mockeries of truth,
And throng with poisonous blooms the verdant Spring
Of weak-kneed youth.
Till many minds were lit with borrowed beams
Of an unwholesome fire;
And many fed their sick souls with hot dreams
Of vague desire.
Thus trash was multiplied on trash; the world
Like a Gehenna glowed,
And through the clouds of Stygian dark upcurled,
Foul radiance flowed;
And Licence lifted in that false sunrise
Her bold and brazen brow;
While Purity before her burning eyes
Melted like snow.
There was red blood upon her trailing robes,
Lit by those lurid skies;
And round the hollow circles of the globes
Of her hot eyes,
And on her robe's hem, "FOLLY" showed in flames
With "PHRENSY," names to shake
Coherency and sense—misleading names—
And when she spake,
Her words did gather fury as they ran,
And as mock lightning and stage thunder,
With firework flash and empty rataplan,
Make schoolboys wonder,
So thrilled thro' fools her windy words. No sword
Of truth her right hand twirl'd,
But one bad Poet's scrawl, and with his word
She bored the world.
In 1832 Tennyson published another small volume of poems which contained that beautifully classical piece of blank verse Œnone; The Sisters, The Palace of Art, Lady Clara Vere de Vere, The May Queen, The Lotus-Eaters, The Dream of Fair Women, and Margaret, all of which have been so frequently parodied that selection is indeed difficult.
The following parody of Tennyson's, The Sisters, was apropos to a division in the House of Commons, relative to the vexed question of marriage with a deceased wife's sister, and appeared in The Tomahawk.