* * * * * *
I've stood in Margate, on a bridge of size
Inferior far to that described by Byron,
Where "palaces and pris'ns on each hand rise—"
—That too's a stone one, this is made of iron—
And little donkey-boys your steps environ,
Each proffering for your choice his tiny hack,
Vaunting its excellence; and, should you hire one,
For sixpence, will he urge, with frequent thwack,
The much-enduring beast to Buenos Ayres—and back.
And there, on many a raw and gusty day,
I've stood, and turn'd my gaze upon the pier,
And seen the crews, that did embark so gay
That self-same morn, now disembark so queer;
Then to myself I've sigh'd and said, "Oh dear!
Who would believe yon sickly-looking man's a
London Jack Tar—a Cheapside Buccaneer!—"
But hold, my Muse!—for this terrific stanza
Is all too stiffly grand for our Extravaganza.
* * * * *
"So now we'll go up, up, up,
And now we'll go down, down, down,
And now we'll go backward and forward,
And now we'll go roun', roun', roun'."—
—I hope you've sufficient discernment to see,
Gentle Reader, that here the discarding the D
Is a fault which you must not attribute to me;
Thus my Nurse cut it off when, "with counterfeit glee,"
She sung, as she danced me about on her knee,
In the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and three:
All I mean to say is, that the Muse is now free
From the self-imposed trammels put on by her betters,
And no longer like Filch, midst the felons and debtors,
At Drury Lane, dances her hornpipe in fetters.
Resuming her track,
At once she goes back
To our hero, the Bagman—Alas! and Alack!
Poor Anthony Blogg
Is as sick as a dog,
Spite of sundry unwonted potations of grog,
By the time the Dutch packet is fairly at sea,
With the sands called the Goodwins a league on her lee.
And now, my good friends, I've a fine opportunity
To obfuscate you all by sea terms with impunity,
And talking of "calking,"
And "quarter-deck walking,"
"Fore and aft,"
And "abaft,"
"Hookers," "barkeys," and "craft,"
(At which Mr. Poole has so wickedly laughed),
Of binnacles—bilboes—the boom call'd the spanker,
The best bower-cable—the jib—and sheet-anchor;
Of lower-deck guns—and of broadsides and chases,
Of taffrails and topsails, and splicing main-braces,
And "Shiver my timbers!" and other odd phrases
Employ'd by old pilots, with hard-featured faces;—
Of the expletives sea-faring Gentlemen use,
The allusions they make to the eyes of their crews;—
How the Sailors, too, swear,
How they cherish their hair,
And what very long pigtails a great many wear.—
But, Reader, I scorn it—the fact is, I fear,
To be candid, I can't make these matters so clear
As Marryat, or Cooper, or Captain Chamier,
Or Sir E. Lytton Bulwer, who brought up the rear
Of the "Nauticals," just at the end of the year
Eighteen thirty-nine—(how Time flies!—Oh, dear!)—
With a well-written preface, to make it appear
That his play, the "Sea-Captain," 's by no means small beer.
There!—"brought up the rear"—you see there's a mistake
Which none of the authors I've mentioned would make,
I ought to have said, that he "sail'd in their wake."—
So I'll merely observe, as the water grew rougher
The more my poor hero continued to suffer,
Till the Sailors themselves cried, in pity, "Poor Buffer!"
Still rougher it grew,
And still harder it blew,
And the thunder kick'd up such a hullballoo,
That even the Skipper began to look blue;
While the crew, who were few,
Look'd very queer, too,
And seem'd not to know what exactly to do,
And they who'd the charge of them wrote in the logs,
"Wind N. E.—blows a hurricane—rains cats and dogs."
In short it soon grew to a tempest as rude as
That Shakspeare describes near the "still vex'd Bermudas,"
When the winds, in their sport,
Drove aside from its port
The King's ship, with the whole Neapolitan Court,
And swamp'd it to give "the King's Son, Ferdinand," a
Soft moment or two with the Lady Miranda,
While her Pa met the rest, and severely rebuked 'em
For unhandsomely doing him out of his Dukedom,
You don't want me, however, to paint you a Storm,
As so many have done, and in colors so warm;
Lord Byron, for instance, in manner facetious,
Mr. Ainsworth, more gravely,—see also Lucretius,
—A writer who gave me no trifling vexation
When a youngster at school, on Dean Colet's foundation.—
Suffice it to say
That the whole of that day,
And the next, and the next, they were scudding away
Quite out of their course,
Propell'd by the force
Of those flatulent folks known in Classical story as
Aquilo, Libs, Notus, Auster, and Boreas,
Driven quite at their mercy
'Twist Guernsey and Jersey,
Till at length they came bump on the rocks and the shallows
In West longtitude, One, fifty-seven, near St. Maloes;
There you will not be surprised
That the vessel capsized,
Or that Blogg, who had made, from intestine commotions,
His specific gravity less than the Ocean's,
Should go floating away,
'Mid the surges and spray,
Like a cork in a gutter, which, swoll'n by a shower,
Runs down Holborn-hill about nine knots an hour.