So in Cheapside, what time Aurora peeps,
A mingled noise of dustmen, milk, and sweeps
Falls on the housemaid’s ear: amazed she stands,
Then opes the door with cinder-sabled hands,
And “Matches” calls. The dustman, bubbled flat,
Thinks ’tis for him and doffs his fan-tail’d hat;
The milkman, whom her second cries assail,
With sudden sink unyokes the clinking pail;
Now louder grown, by turns she screams and weeps—
Alas! her screaming only brings the sweeps.
Sweeps but put out—she wants to raise a flame,
And calls for matches, but ’tis still the same.
Atoms and housemaids! mark the moral true—
If once ye go astray, no match for you!
As atoms in one mass united mix,
So bricks attraction feel for kindred bricks;
Some in the cellar view, perchance, on high,
Fair chimney chums on beds of mortar lie;
Enamour’d of the sympathetic clod,
Leaps the red bridegroom to the labourer’s hod:
And up the ladder bears the workman, taught
To think he bears the bricks—mistaken thought!
A proof behold! if near the top they find
The nymphs or broken-corner’d or unkind,
Back to the base, “resulting with a bound,” [79]
They bear their bleeding carriers to the ground!
So legends tell along the lofty hill
Paced the twin heroes, gallant Jack and Jill;
On trudged the Gemini to reach the rail
That shields the well’s top from the expectant pail,
When, ah! Jack falls; and, rolling in the rear,
Jill feels the attraction of his kindred sphere;
Head over heels begins his toppling track,
Throws sympathetic somersets with Jack,
And at the mountain’s base bobs plump against him, whack!
Ye living atoms, who unconscious sit,
Jumbled by chance in gallery, box, and pit,
For you no Peter opes the fabled door,
No churlish Charon plies the shadowy oar;
Breathe but a space, and Boreas’ casual sweep
Shall bear your scatter’d corses o’er the deep,
To gorge the greedy elements, and mix
With water, marl, and clay, and stones, and sticks;
While, charged with fancied souls, sticks, stones, and clay
Shall take your seats, and hiss or clap the play.
O happy age! when convert Christians read
No sacred writings but the Pagan creed—
O happy age! when, spurning Newton’s dreams,
Our poets’ sons recite Lucretian themes,
Abjure the idle systems of their youth,
And turn again to atoms and to truth;—
O happier still! when England’s dauntless dames,
Awed by no chaste alarms, no latent shames,
The bard’s fourth book unblushingly peruse,
And learn the rampant lessons of the stews!
All hail, Lucretius! renovated sage!
Unfold the modest mystics of thy page;
Return no more to thy sepulchral shelf,
But live, kind bard—that I may live myself!
XVI.
THEATRICAL ALARM-BELL.
By THE EDITOR OF THE M. P. [81]
[MORNING POST.]
“Bounce, Jupiter, bounce!”—O’Hara.