"Lullaby, O, lullaby!
Fie, you little creature, fie!
Lullaby, O, lullaby!
Is no poppy-syrup nigh?
Give him some, or give him all,
I am nodding to his fall!"
"Lullaby, O, lullaby!
Two such nights and I shall die!
Lullaby, O, lullaby!
He'll be bruised, and so shall I—
How can I from bed-posts keep,
When I'm walking in my sleep!"
"Lullaby, O, lullaby!
Sleep his very looks deny—
Lullaby, O, lullaby!
Nature soon will stupefy—
My nerves relax—my eyes grow dim—
Who's that fallen—me or him?"
ODE TO PERRY, THE INVENTOR OF THE STEEL PEN. THOMAS HOOD
"In this good work, Penn appears the greatest, usefullest of God's instruments. Firm and unbending when the exigency requires it—soft and yielding when rigid inflexibility is not a desideratum—fluent and flowing, at need, for eloquent rapidity—slow and retentive in cases of deliberation—never spluttering or by amplification going wide of the mark—never splitting, if it can be helped, with any one, but ready to wear itself out rather in their service—all things as it were with all men—ready to embrace the hand of Jew, Christian, or Mohammedan—heavy with the German, light with the Italian, oblique with the English, upright with the Roman, backward in coming forward with the Hebrew—in short, for flexibility, amiability, constitutional durability, general ability, and universal utility, It would be hard to find a parallel to the great Penn." —Perry's CHARACTERISATION OF A SETTLER.
O! Patent Pen-inventing Perrian Perry!
Friend of the goose and gander,
That now unplucked of their quill-feathers wander,
Cackling, and gabbling, dabbling, making merry,
About the happy fen,
Untroubled for one penny-worth of pen,
For which they chant thy praise all Britain through,
From Goose-Green unto Gander-Cleugh!—
Friend to all Author-kind—
Whether of Poet or of Proser—
Thou art composer unto the composer
Of pens—yea, patent vehicles for Mind
To carry it on jaunts, or more extensive
PERRYgrinations through the realms of thought;
Each plying from the Comic to the Pensive,
An Omnibus of intellectual sort;
Modern improvements in their course we feel,
And while to iron railroads heavy wares,
Dry goods and human bodies, pay their fares,
Mind flies on steel
To Penrith, Penrhyn, even to Penzance;
Nay, penetrates, perchance,
To Pennsylvania, or, without rash vaunts,
To where the Penguin haunts!
In times bygone, when each man cut his quill,
With little Perryan skill,
What horrid, awkward, bungling tools of trade
Appeared the writing implements home-made!
What Pens were sliced, hewed, hacked, and haggled out,
Slit or unslit, with many a various snout,
Aquiline, Roman, crooked, square, and snubby.
Stumpy and stubby;
Some capable of ladye-billets neat,
Some only fit for ledger-keeping clerk,
And some to grub down Peter Stubbs his mark,
Or smudge through some illegible receipt;
Others in florid caligraphic plans,
Equal to ships, and wiggy heads, and swans!
To try in any common inkstands, then,
With all their miscellaneous stocks,
To find a decent pen,
Was like a dip into a lucky box:
You drew—and got one very curly,
And split like endive in some hurly-burly;
The next unslit, and square at end, a spade,
The third, incipient pop-gun, not yet made;
The fourth a broom; the fifth of no avail,
Turned upward, like a rabbit's tail;
And last, not least, by way of a relief,
A stump that Master Richard, James or John,
Had tried his candle-cookery upon,
Making "roast-beef!"