There he woo’d and won a dusky
Bride, of instincts like his own;
Talk’d of love till he was husky
In a tongue to us unknown:
Side by side ’twas theirs to ravage
The potato ground, or cut
Down the unsuspecting savage
With the well-aim’d cocoa-nut:—
Till the miscreant Stranger tore him
Screaming from his blue-faced fair;
And they flung strange raiment o’er him,
Raiment which he could not bear:
Sever’d from the pure embraces
Of his children and his spouse,
He must ride fantastic races
Mounted on reluctant sows:
But the heart of wistful Jocko
Still was with his ancient flame
In the nutgroves of Morocco;
Or if not it’s all the same.
Grinder, winsome grinsome Grinder!
They who see thee and whose soul
Melts not at thy charms, are blinder
Than a trebly-bandaged mole:
They to whom thy curt (yet clever)
Talk, thy music and thine ape,
Seem not to be joys for ever,
Are but brutes in human shape.
’Tis not that thy mien is stately,
’Tis not that thy tones are soft;
’Tis not that I care so greatly
For the same thing play’d so oft:
But I’ve heard mankind abuse thee;
And perhaps it’s rather strange,
But I thought that I would choose thee
For encomium, as a change.