The mandate pass’d, the axe applied,
The woodman’s efforts echoed wide;
The toppling elm trees fell around,
And cumbrous ruin strew’d the ground.
The tuneful thrush, whose vernal song
Was earliest heard the boughs among,
Exil’d from grounds, where he was bred,
To some far habitation fled;
Remote from court and courtly strife,
To pass a sober, quiet life.
O’er head the Rooks, in circles flew,
And closer still, and closer drew;
Then perch’d amid the desolation,
In senatorial consultation:
The chairman, far advanc’d in age,
A sapient-looking personage,
Who long the councils of the land
Had sway’d with a tenacious hand;
—For e’en among the feather’d race,
There are, who cling to pow’r and place:—
There wanted not, among the throng,
Those who averr’d, that much too long
He had, within the sable state,
Continued to adjudicate;—
So tardily his judgments came,
They injur’d his judicial fame;
What, though they were unting’d by bribe,
Or fear;—the sad impatient tribe,
Who fed on Hope’s expectancies,
Were ruin’d—by his just decrees!
But to our tale:—the speaker now,
Perch’d on an elm tree’s topmost bough,
Had hush’d the multitude in awe,
You might not hear a single “caw;”
He then in pride of conscious pow’r,
Commenc’d the bus’ness of the hour.
“Ye rooks and daws in senate met;”
He said, and smooth’d his breast of jet:
“What crimes, among our sable band,
Have brought this ruin on our land?
Has murder mark’d our noonday flight?
Or depredation in the night?
Has rook or daw, in thought or word,
Rebell’d against our Sovereign Lord?
No! rather say, our loyalty
Has echo’d oft, from tree to tree!
Have we not, when the cannon’s sound
Gave joyous intimation round,
Of triumph won by land or sea,
Join’d in the general jubilee?
Why, then, ye advocates of taste,
Lay ye our habitations waste?
Why level low our rookery,
And blot it out from memory?
Man lacketh not a host of pleas,
To vindicate his cruelties.
‘Improvement’s come!’ ’tis thus they rhyme
‘Upon the rolling car of Time.’[200]—
Yes! come, if blessings they dispense,
With due regard to feeling—sense;
But when they emanate from pride,
And scheme on scheme is multiplied,
To beautify by acts like this,
Their overgrown metropolis,
To please the vitiate taste of men,
They cease to be improvements then.
’Tis not enough, to please the eye,
With terrace walks, and turrets high;
With sloping lawns, and dark arcades;
With cock-boat lakes, and forest glades,
With schoolboy cataracts and jets;
With Turkish mosques and minarets!
Or Lilliputian arches, rich,
Spanning a vegetating ditch!
Improvement opes a nobler field,
Than Grecian plinth and column yield!
’Tis when the streams of treasure flow,
To lighten sorrow,—soften woe;—
Rebuild the structure, ruin raz’d,
Relume the eye, that want hath glaz’d:
And flowing far from revelry,
They cheer the sons of penury,
Who sicken in the breeze of health!
And starve, amid a nation’s wealth!
To chase despair—and bring relief,
For human crime, and human grief!
These are thy triumphs, Virtue! these
Are sparks of heav’n-born sympathies,
That through man’s denser nature shine,
And prove his origin divine!
Oh! may we hope, in Britain’s school,
There are, who, free from sophist rule,
Have learnt not, ’neath Italian skies,
Their native genius to despise;
In whom, amid the bosom’s throes,
The innate love of country glows!
Assembled birds! it is for you
To point the course we must pursue:
Our monarch ne’er could contemplate
Amid the recent change in state,
That we, like other rooks, should be
Exil’d from seats of royalty!
Then let us humbly seek the throne,
And make our common grievance known
His Majesty will ne’er consent,
That this, our sable parliament,
Should thus be driv’n abroad to roam,
And banish’d from our native home.”
He ceas’d;—a shout of wild applause,
Tumultuous burst, from rooks and daws!
Ne’er yet, had yonder central sun,
Since worlds had in their orbits run,
Beheld upon a spot of earth
So much of simultaneous mirth.
Scarce had the turbulence subsided.
When, as if Fate their joy derided,
The hatchet reach’d with thund’ring stroke
The tree from whence the Chairman spoke.
Alas! the triumph was but brief;
The sound struck awe—like midnight thief—
The senate fled from falling trees,
And stretch’d their pinions to the breeze:
The shrubs behind Spring Garden-place
Receiv’d the emigrated race.
Now far from woodman’s axe, with care
They build, and breed, and nestle there.
T. T.
Come bright Improvement on the car of Time,
And rule the spacious world from clime to clime.
Pleasures of Hope
MUSIC AND ANIMALS.
Bonaventure d’Argonne says, “Doubting the truth of those who say it is natural for us to love music, especially the sounds of instruments, and that beasts are touched with it, I one day, being in the country, endeavoured to determine the point; and, while a man was playing on the trump marine, made my observations on a cat, a dog, a horse, an ass, a hind, cows, small birds, and a cock and hens, who were in a yard, under a window on which I was leaning. I did not perceive that the cat was the least affected; and I even judged, by her air, that she would have given all the instruments in the world for a mouse, sleeping in the sun all the time; the horse stopped short from time to time before the window, lifting his head up now and then, as he was feeding on the grass; the dog continued for above an hour seated on his hind legs, looking steadfastly at the player; the ass did not discover the least indication of his being touched, eating his thistles peaceably; the hind lifted up her large wide ears, and seemed very attentive; the cows slept a little, and after gazing as though they had been acquainted with us, went forward: some birds who were in an aviary, and others on the trees and bushes, almost tore their throats with singing; but the cock, who minded only his hens, and the hens, who were solely employed in scraping on a neighbouring dunghill, did not show in any manner that they took the least pleasure in hearing the trump marine.”