“There were a feast for Alexander’s Feast!
The real sort—none of your mock or spurious!”
And then he mention’d Aldermen deceased,
And “Epicurius,”
And how Tertullian had enjoy’d such foison;
And speculated on that verdigrease
That isn’t poison.
“Talk of your Spring, and verdure, and all that!
Give me green fat!
As for your Poets with their groves of myrtles
And billing turtles,
Give me, for poetry, them Turtles there,
A-billing in a bill of fare!”
“Of all the things I ever swallow—
Good, well-dressed turtle beats them hollow—
It almost makes me wish, I vow,
To have two stomachs, like a cow!”
And lo! as with the cud, an inward thrill
Upheaved his waistcoat and disturb’d his frill,
His mouth was oozing and he work’d his jaw—
“I almost think that I could eat one raw!”
And thus, as “inward love breeds outward talk,”
The portly pair continued to discourse;
And then—as Gray describes of life’s divorce—
With “longing lingering look” prepared to walk,—
Having thro’ one delighted sense, at least,
Enjoy’d a sort of Barmecidal feast,
And with prophetic gestures, strange to see,
Forestall’d the civic Banquet yet to be,
Its callipash and callipee!
A pleasant prospect—but alack!
Scarcely each Alderman had turn’d his back,
When seizing on the moment so propitious,
And having learn’d that they were so delicious
To bite and sup,
From praises so high flown and injudicious,—
And nothing could be more pernicious!
The turtles fell to work, and ate each other up!
MORAL.
Never, from folly or urbanity,
Praise people thus profusely to their faces,
Till quite in love with their own graces,
They’re eaten up by vanity!