THE FEDERAL PHŒNIX
When Herodotus, surnamed "The Father of History"
(We are not informed who was History's mother),
Went a travelling to Egypt, that region of mystery,
Where each step presented some marvel or other,
In a great city there, called (in Greek) Heliopolis,
The priests put him up to a strange story—rather—
Of a bird, who came up to that priestly metropolis,
Once in five hundred years, to inter its own father.
When to filial feeling apparently callous,
Not a plume ruffled (as we should say, not a hair rent),
In a pot-pourri made of sweet-spice, myrrh, and aloes,
He flagrantly, burnt, after burying, his parent.
But Pomponius Mela has managed to gather
Of this curious story a modified version,
In which the bird burns up itself, not its father,
And soars to new life from its fiery immersion.
This bird has oft figured in emblems and prophecies—
And though Snyders ne'er painted its picture, nor Weenix
Its portraits on plates of a well-known fire-office is,
Which, after this bird's name, is christened the Phœnix.
Henceforth a new Phœnix, from o'er the Atlantic,
Our old fire-office friend from his brass-plate displaces;
With a plumage of greenbacks, all ruffled, and antic
In Old Abe's rueful phiz and Old Abe's shambling graces.
As the bird of Arabia wrought resurrection
By a flame all whose virtues grew out of what fed it,
So the Federal Phœnix has earned re-election
By a holocaust huge of rights, commerce, and credit.
On December 10th, Punch published this brutal burlesque anticipation of that noble speech made by President Lincoln at his second Inauguration, which has now taken its due rank among the great masterpieces of forensic English:
PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S INAUGURAL SPEECH