The profitable Abbey is
A sacred ‘Change for stony stock,
Not that a speculation ’tis—
The profit’s founded on a rock.
Death and the Doctors in each nave
Bony investments have inurn’d,
And hard ’twould be to find a grave
From which “no money is returned!”
Here many a pensive pilgrim, brought
By reverence for those learnëd bones,
Shall often come and walk your short
Two-shilling fare upon the stones—[7]
Ye have that talisman of Wealth
Which puddling chemists sought of old
Till ruin’d out of hope and health—
The Tomb’s the stone that turns to gold!
Oh, licensed cannibals, ye eat
Your dinners from your own dead race,
Think Gray, preserved—a “funeral meat,”
And Dryden, devil’d—after grace,
A relish;—and you take your meal
From Rare Ben Jonson underdone,
Or, whet your holy knives on Steele,
To cut away at Addison!
Oh say, of all this famous age,
Whose learnëd bones your hopes expect,
Oh have ye number’d Rydal’s sage,
Or Moore among your Ghosts elect?
Lord Byron was not doom’d to make
You richer by his final sleep—
Why don’t ye warn the Great to take
Their ashes to no other heap!
Southey’s reversion have ye got?
With Coleridge, for his body, made
A bargain?—has Sir Walter Scott,
Like Peter Schlemihl, sold his shade?
Has Rogers haggled hard, or sold
His features for your marble shows,
Or Campbell barter’d ere he’s cold,
All interest in his “bone repose?”
Rare is your show, ye righteous men!
Priestly Politos,—rare, I ween;
But should ye not outside the Den
Paint up what in it may be seen?
A long green Shakspeare, with a deer
Grasp’d in the many folds it died in,—
A Butler stuff’d from ear to ear,
Wet White Bears weeping o’er a Dryden!
Paint Garrick up like Mr. Paap,
A Giant of some inches high;
Paint Handel up, that organ chap,
With you, as grinders, in his eye;
Depict some plaintive antique thing,
And say th’ original may be seen;—
Blind Milton with a dog and string
May be the Beggar o’ Bethnal Green!
Put up in Poet’s Corner, near
The little door, a platform small;
Get there a monkey—never fear,
You’ll catch the gapers, one and all!
Stand each of ye a Body Guard,
A Trumpet under either fin,
And yell away in Palace Yard
“All dead! All dead! Walk in! Walk in!”
(But when the people are inside,
Their money paid—I pray you, bid
The keepers not to mount and ride
A race around each coffin lid.—
Poor Mrs. Bodkin thought, last year,
That it was hard—the woman clacks—
To have so little in her ear—
And be so hurried through the Wax!—)
“Walk in! two shillings only! come!
Be not by country grumblers funk’d!—
Walk in, and see th’ illustrious dumb,
The Cheapest House for the defunct!”
Write up, ’twill breed some just reflection,
And every rude surmise ’twill stop—
Write up, that you have no connection
(In large)—with any other shop!