THE ISLE OF DOGS.
“On Linden when the sun was low.”
Ten thousand years the Isle of Dogs,
Lay sunk in mire, and hid in fogs,
Rats, cats and bats, and snakes and frogs—
The tenants of its scenery.
No pic-nic parties came from town,
To dance with nymphs, white, black, or brown,
(They stopped at Greenwich, at the Crown,
Neglecting all its greenery.)
Dut Dog-land saw another sight,
When serjeants cried, “Eyes left, eyes right,”
And jackets blue, and breeches white,
Were seen upon its tenantry.
Then tents along the shore were seen,
Then opened shop the gay Canteen,
And floated flags, inscribed,—“The Queen.”
All bustle, show, and pennantry.
There strutted laughter-loving Pat,
John Bull (in spirits rather flat,)
And Donald, restless as a rat,
Three nations in their rivalry.
There bugle rang, and rattled drum,
And sparkled in the glass the rum,
Each hero thinking of his plum,
The prize of Spanish chivalry.
At last, Blue-Peter mast-high shone,
The Isle of Dogs was left alone,
The bats and rats then claimed their own
By process sure and summary.
The bold battalions sail’d for Spain,
Soon longing to get home again,
Finding their stomachs tried in vain
To live on Spanish flummery.
A cloud of smoke, which the wrath of Æolus poured upon our vessel, as a general contribution from all the forges along shore, here broke my reverie, by nearly suffocating the ship’s company. But the river in this quarter is as capricious as the fashions of a French milliner, or the loves of a figurante. We rounded a point of land, emerged into blue stream and bright sky, and left the whole Cyclopean region behind, ruddied with jets of flame, and shrouded with vapour, like a re-rehearsal of the great fire of London.
I had scarcely time to rejoice in the consciousness that I breathed once more, when my ear was caught by the sound of a song at the fore-part of the deck. The voice was of that peculiar kind, which once belonged to the stage coachman, (a race now belonging alone to history,)—strong without clearness; full without force; deep without profundity, and, as Sydney Smith says, “a great many other things without a great many other things;” or, as Dr. Parr would tell mankind,—“the product of nights of driving and days of indulgence; of facing the wintry storm, and enjoying the genial cup, the labours of the Jehu, and the luxuries of the Sybarite,”—it was to Moore’s melody,—
——“My dream of life
From morn till night,
Was love, still, love.”