They let off a trill, and it asks the way,
Gallop O! fly away! jump!
They quiver and shake—oh! I bid you good day,
They mock Catalani, &c.
Such singing I guess, does nobody good,
Gallop O! fly away! jump!
Notes wander about, like the babes in the wood,
They mock Catalani, &c.
I sing by myself, but pray take a peep,
Gallop O! fly away! jump!
You’ll soon find singers, to sing you to sleep,
They mock Catalani, &c.
[Exit Song.
From the same piece there may be another “seasonable” extract, for we are at that period of the year when the chase, which was once a necessary pursuit, is indulged as an amusement. In Von Weber’s “Der Freischütz,” the casting of the fifth bullet by Caspar is accompanied by “a wild chase in the clouds;” the writer who travestied that opera, as it was represented at the Lyceum theatre, represents this operation to be thus accompanied:—
Neighing and barking ‘old clothes!’—Skylarking—A wild chase in the clouds; an ‘Etherial Race—inhabitants of air,’ consisting of skeleton dogs muzzled, skeleton horses, and skeleton horsemen, with overalls and preservers, and Mr. Green from the city, are in pursuit of a skeleton stag ‘to Bachelor’s-hall,’ with grave music accompanying the following—
SONG AND CHORUS. BY SKELETON HUNTSMEN.
“Bright Chanticleer proclaims the dawn.”
The moon’s eclipse proclaims our hunt,
The graves release their dead,
The common man lifts up the wood,
The lord springs from the lead;
The lady-corpses hurry on,
To join the ghostly crowds,
And off we go, with a ho! so—ho!
A—hunting in the clouds.
With a hey, ho, chivey!
Hark forward, hark forward, tantivy!
&c.
No hill, no dale, no glen, no mire,
No dew, no night, no storm,
No earth, no water, air, nor fire,
Can do wild huntsmen harm.
We laugh at what the living dread,
And throw aside our shrouds,
And off we go, with a ho! so—ho!
A—hunting in the clouds.
With a hey, ho, chivey!
Hark forward, hark forward, tantivy,
&c.