Ah, perhaps, when old age’s white snow
Has silver’d the crown of Hayne’s nob—
For even the greenest will grow
As hoary as “White-headed Bob—”
He’ll wish, in the days of his prime,
He had been rather kinder to one
He hath left to the malice of Time—
A woman—so weak and undone!
ODE TO R. W. ELLISTON, ESQ.,
THE GREAT LESSEE!
“Rover. Do you know, you villain, that I am this moment the greatest man living?”—Wild Oats.
H! Great Lessee! Great Manager! Great Man!
Oh, Lord High Elliston! Immortal Pan
Of all the pipes that play in Drury Lane!
Macready’s master! Westminster’s high Dane
(As Galway Martin, in the House’s walls,
Hamlet and Doctor Ireland justly calls)
Friend to the sweet and ever-smiling Spring!
Magician of the lamp and prompter’s ring!
Drury’s Aladdin! Whipper-in of actors!
Kicker of rebel preface-malefactors!
Glass-blowers’ corrector! King of the cheque-taker!
At once Great Leamington and Winston-Maker!
Dramatic Bolter of plain Bunns and cakes!
In silken hose the most reform’d of Rakes!
Oh, Lord High Elliston! lend me an ear!
(Poole is away, and Williams shall keep clear)
While I, in little slips of prose, not verse,
Thy splendid course, as pattern-work, rehearse!
Bright was thy youth—thy manhood brighter still—
The greatest Romeo upon Holburn Hill—
Lightest comedian of the pleasant day,
When Jordan threw her sunshine o’er a play!
But these, though happy, were but subject-times,
And no man cares for bottom-steps, that climbs—
Far from my wish it is to stifle down
The hours that saw thee snatch the Surrey crown!
Though now thy hand a mightier sceptre wields,
Fair was thy reign in sweet St. George’s Fields.
Dibdin was Premier—and a Golden Age
For a short time enrich’d the subject stage.
Thou hadst, than other Kings, more peace-and-plenty;
Ours but one Bench could boast, but thou hadst twenty;
But the times changed—and Booth-acting no more
Drew Rulers’ shillings to the gallery door.
Thou didst, with bag and baggage, wander thence,
Repentant, like thy neighbour Magdalens!
Next, the Olympic Games were tried, each feat
Practised the most bewitching in Wych Street.
Charles had his royal ribaldry restored,
And in a downright neighbourhood drank and whored;
Rochester there in dirty ways again
Revell’d—and lived once more in Drury Lane:
But thou, R. W., kept thy moral ways,
Pit-lecturing ’twixt the farces and the plays,
A lamplight Irving to the butcher-boys
That soil’d the benches and that made a noise:—
“You,—in the back!—can scarcely hear a line!
Down from those benches—butchers—they are Mine!”
Lastly—and thou wert built for it by nature!—
Crown’d was thy head in Drury Lane Theätre!
Gentle George Robins saw that it was good,
And renters cluck’d around thee in a brood.
King thou wert made of Drury and of Kean!
Of many a lady and of many a Queen!
With Poole and Larpent was thy reign begun—
But now thou turnest from the Dead and Dun,
Hook’s in thine eye, to write thy plays, no doubt,
And Colman lives to cut the damnlets out!
Oh, worthy of the house! the King’s commission!
Isn’t thy condition “a most bless’d condition?”
Thou reignest over Winston, Kean, and all
The very lofty and the very small—
Showest the plumbless Bunn the way to kick—
Keepest a Williams for thy veriest stick—
Seest a Vestris in her sweetest moments,
Without the danger of newspaper comments—
Tellest Macready, as none dared before,
Thine open mind from the half-open door!—
(Alas! I fear he has left Melpomene’s crown,
To be a Boniface in Buxton town!)—
Thou holdst the watch, as half-price people know,
And callest to them, to a moment,—“Go!”
Teachest the sapient Sapio how to sing—
Hangest a cat most oddly by the wing—”
Hast known the length of a Cubitt-foot—and kiss’d
The pearly whiteness of a Stephen’s wrist—
Kissing and pitying—tender and humane!
“By heaven she loves me! Oh, it is too plain!”
A sigh like this thy trembling passion slips,
Dimpling the warm Madeira at thy lips!