THE
COMIC POEMS
OF
THOMAS HOOD.

FAULTS ON BOTH SIDES.

WAR DANCE—THE OPENING OF THE BALL.

THE COMIC POEMS
OF
THOMAS HOOD.

WITH A PREFACE BY
THOMAS HOOD THE YOUNGER.
A NEW AND COMPLETE EDITION.

LONDON:
E. MOXON, SON, AND COMPANY,
DORSET BUILDINGS, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C.

Ballantyne Press
BALLANTYNE AND HANSON, EDINBURGH
CHANDOS STREET, LONDON

PREFACE.

If the general public, acquainted only with the comic works of Thomas Hood, were taken by surprise when they found how he could handle serious and solemn themes; those who saw him in the flesh must have been equally astonished to learn how grave and melancholy a man the famous wit was to all appearance. The chronic ill health, which gave this expression to his countenance, was, however, powerless to affect the tone of his mind. “Here lies one who spat more blood and made more puns than any man living,” was the epitaph he half-jestingly proposed for himself. The connection between the disease and the comic faculty is not so unreasonable as it appears at first. The invalid, who could supply mirth for millions while he himself was propped up with pillows on the bed of sickness, was not a jester whose sole stock in trade consisted in mere animal spirits—which are too often mistaken for wit, but have in common with other spirits a tendency to evaporate somewhat rapidly. Hood’s wit was the fruit of an even temperament, a cheery and contented mind endowed with a keen appreciation of the ludicrous. This acute perception of what is ludicrous is the foundation of all wit, but it may influence the mind in two ways. It may render its possessor as indifferent to the feelings as it makes him alive to the failings of others. How often does the wit, delighting in the flash and report of his jest, forget the wound it may inflict!

But, on the other hand, the shrewd appreciation of the weaknesses of others assists a kindly and well-balanced mind to avoid the infliction of pain; and the wit of Thomas Hood was of this nature. It was all the brighter because it was never stained by a tear wantonly caused. Even the temptations of practical joking—and they have a strong influence on those who enjoy the comic side of things—never betrayed him into any freak that could give pain. He worked away industriously with wood, paint, and glue to send his friend Franck a new and killing bait for the early spring—a veritable Poisson d’Avril, constructed to come in half after a brief immersion, and reveal the inscription, “Oh, you April Fool!” He could gravely persuade his young wife, when she was first learning the mysteries of housekeeping, that she must never purchase plaice with red spots, for they were a proof that the fish were not fresh. But he was incapable of any of the cruel pleasantries for which Theodore Hook was famous: indeed, the only person he ever frightened, even, with a practical joke, was himself; when as a boy he traced with the smoke of a candle on the ceiling of a passage outside his bedroom a diabolical face, which was intended to startle his brother, but which so alarmed the artist himself, when he was going to bed forgetful of his own feat, that he ran down stairs—in a panic and in his night-dress—into the presence of his father’s guests assembled in the drawing-room. He used to enjoy so heartily and chuckle so merrily over his innocent practical jokes and hoaxes (he was never more delighted than when a friend of his was completely imposed on by a sham account of a survey of the Heavens through Lord Rosse’s “monster telescope”) that the tenderness he showed for the feelings of others is more remarkable. The same forbearance characterises his writings. In spite of many and great provocations, he seldom, or never, wrote a bitter word, though that he could have been severe is amply indicated in his “Ode to Rae Wilson,” or still more in certain letters on “Copyright and Copywrong,” which he was spurred on by injustice and ill-usage to address to the Athenæum. He was a Shandean, who carried out in his life as well as his writings the principles which Sterne confined to the latter.

The first appearance of Thomas Hood as a comic writer was in the year 1826, when he published the First Series of “Whims and Oddities.” The critics in many instances took offence at his puns, as might have been expected, for his style was new and startling. His book was full of word-play, and it is easy to conceive—as he wrote in his address to the Second Edition—“how gentlemen with one idea were perplexed with a double meaning.” However, the public approved if the critics did not, and called for a second and soon after a third edition. Finally, after the publication of a second series, a fourth issue, containing the two series in one volume, was demanded. “Come what may,” said Hood, “this little book will now leave four imprints behind it—and a horse could do no more!”

He had by this time commenced the Comic Annuals, a series which he carried on for many years, and by which he established his fame as the first wit and humourist of his day. When this publication ceased he wrote first for Colburn’s New Monthly, of which he was appointed Editor on Hook’s death; and subsequently, and up to the time of his death, in his own periodical, Hood’s Magazine.

Puns have been styled the lowest form of wit, and the critics have fallen foul of them from time immemorial until the present day. But a pun proper—and there should be a strict definition of a pun—is, it is humbly submitted, of so complicated a nature as to be anything but a low form of wit. A mere jingle of similar sounds, or a distortion of pronunciation does not constitute a pun—a double meaning is essential to its existence—a play of sense as well as of sound. That the latter was in Hood’s opinion the more important feature of the two is to be inferred from his statement that “a pun is something like a cherry: though there may be a slight outward indication of partition—of duplicity of meaning, yet no gentleman need make two bites at it against his own pleasure.” In other words, the sense is complete without any reference to the second meaning. Tested by this rule, the majority of so-called puns, which have brought discredit on punning, would be immediately condemned, the only excuse for the form in which they are written being the endeavour to tack on a second meaning, or too often only an echo of sound without meaning.

Perhaps the best defence of punning is to be found in the following stanzas of “Miss Kilmansegg:”

HERE’S strength in double joints, no doubt,
In double X Ale, and Dublin Stout,
That the single sorts know nothing about—
And the fist is strongest when doubled—
And double aqua-fortis, of course,
And double soda-water, perforce,
Are the strongest that ever bubbled!

“There’s double beauty whenever a Swan
Swims on a Lake, with her double thereon;
And ask the gardener, Luke or John,
Of the beauty of double-blowing—
A double dahlia delights the eye;
And it’s far the loveliest sight in the sky
When a double rainbow is glowing!

“There’s warmth in a pair of double soles;
As well as a double allowance of coals—
In a coat that is double-breasted—
In double windows and double doors;
And a double U wind is blest by scores
For its warmth to the tender-chested.

“There’s a twofold sweetness in double pipes;
And a double barrel and double snipes
Give the sportsman a duplicate pleasure;
There’s double safety in double locks;
And double letters bring cash for the box;
And all the world knows that double knocks
Are gentility’s double measure.

“There’s double sweetness in double rhymes,
And a double at Whist and a double Times
In profit are certainly double—
By doubling, the hare contrives to escape;
And all seamen delight in a doubled Cape,
And a double-reef’d topsail in trouble.

“There’s a double chuck at a double chin,
And of course there’s a double pleasure therein,
If the parties were brought to telling:
And however our Denises take offence,
A double meaning shows double sense;
And if proverbs tell truth,
A double tooth
Is Wisdom’s adopted dwelling!”

The reputation of Thomas Hood as a wit and humourist rests on his writings chiefly. His recorded sayings are few, for in general society he was shy and reserved, seldom making a joke, or doing it with so grave a face that the witticism seemed an accident, and was in many cases possibly allowed to pass unnoticed, for a great number of people do not recognise a joke that is not prefaced by a jingle of the cap and bells. When in the company of a few intimate friends, however, he was full of fun and good spirits. Unfortunately, on such occasions the good things were not “set in a note-book,” and so were for the most part lost; though at times an anecdote, well-authenticated, turns up to make us regret that more have not been preserved.

One such anecdote, which has not hitherto appeared in print, may not be out of place here. Hood and “Peter Priggins”—the Rev. Mr. Hewlett—went on a visit to a friend of the latter’s, residing near Ramsgate. As they drove out of the town they passed a board on which was printed in large letters

BEWARE THE DOG.

A glance at the premises which the announcement was intended to guard showed that the quadruped was not forthcoming, whereupon Hood jumped out of the gig, and, picking up a bit of chalk (plentiful enough in the neighbourhood), wrote under the warning—

WARE BE THE DOG?

These introductory remarks cannot be better wound-up than by a quotation from a preface to “Hood’s Own,” in which is laid down the system of “Practical Cheerful Philosophy,” which is reflected in his writings, and which influenced his life. The reader will more thoroughly appreciate the comic writings of Thomas Hood after its perusal:

In the absence of a certain thin “blue and yellow” visage, and attenuated figure,—whose effigies may one day be affixed to the present work,—you will not be prepared to learn that some of the merriest effusions in the forthcoming numbers have been the relaxations of a gentleman literally enjoying bad health—the carnival, so to speak, of a personified Jour Maigre. The very fingers so aristocratically slender, that now hold the pen, hint plainly of the “ills that flesh is heir to:”—my coats have become great coats, my pantaloons are turned into trowsers, and, by a worse bargain than Peter Schemihl’s, I seem to have retained my shadow and sold my substance. In short, as happens to prematurely old port wine, I am of a bad colour with very little body. But what then? That emaciated hand still lends a hand to embody in words and sketches the creations or recreations of a Merry Fancy: those gaunt sides yet shake heartily as ever at the Grotesques and Arabesques and droll Picturesques that my good Genius (a Pantagruelian Familiar) charitably conjures up to divert me from more sombre realities. It was the whim of a late pleasant Comedian, to suppose a set of spiteful imps sitting up aloft, to aggravate all his petty mundane annoyances; whereas I prefer to believe in the ministry of kindlier Elves that “nod to me and do me courtesies.” Instead of scaring away these motes in the sunbeam, I earnestly invoke them, and bid them welcome; for the tricksy spirits make friends with the animal spirits, and do not I, like a father romping with his own urchins,—do not I forget half my cares whilst partaking in their airy gambols? Such sports are as wholesome for the mind as the other frolics for the body. For on our own treatment of that excellent Friend or terrible Enemy the Imagination, it depends whether we are to be scared and haunted by a Scratching Fanny, or tended by an affectionate Invisible Girl—like an unknown Love, blessing us with “favours secret, sweet, and precious,” and fondly stealing us from this worky-day world to a sunny sphere of her own.

This is a novel version, Reader, of “Paradise and the Peri,” but it is as true as it is new. How else could I have converted a serious illness into a comic wellness—by what other agency could I have transported myself, as a Cockney would say, from Dullage to Grinnage? It was far from a practical joke to be laid up in ordinary in a foreign land, under the care of Physicians quite as much abroad as myself with the case; indeed, the shades of the gloaming were stealing over my prospect; but I resolved, that, like the sun, so long as my day lasted, I would look on the bright side of everything. The raven croaked, but I persuaded myself that it was the nightingale! there was the smell of the mould, but I remembered that it nourished the violets. However my body might cry craven, my mind luckily had no mind to give in. So, instead of mounting on the black long-tailed coach horse, she vaulted on her old Hobby that had capered in the Morris-Dance, and began to exhort from its back. To be sure, said she, matters look darkly enough; but the more need for the lights. Allons! Courage! Things may take a turn, as the pig said on the spit. Never throw down your cards, but play out the game. The more certain to lose, the wiser to get all the play you can for your money. Come—give us a song! chirp away like that best of cricket-players, the cricket himself. Be bowled out or caught out, but never throw down the bat. As to Health, it’s the weather of the body—it hails, it rains, it blows, it snows, at present, but it may clear up by-and-bye. You cannot eat, you say, and you must not drink; but laugh and make believe, like the Barber’s wise brother at the Barmecide’s feast. Then, as to thinness, not to flatter, you look like a lath that has had a split with the carpenter and a fall out with the plaster; but so much the better: remember how the smugglers trim the sails of the lugger to escape the notice of the cutter. Turn your edge to the old enemy, and mayhap he won’t see you! Come—be alive! You have no more right to slight your life than to neglect your wife—they are the two better halves that make a man of you! Is not life your means of living? So stick to thy business, and thy business will stick to thee. Of course, continued my mind, I am quite disinterested in this advice—for I am aware of my own immortality—but for that very reason, take care of the mortal body, poor body, and give it as long a day as you can.

Now, my mind seeming to treat the matter very pleasantly as well as profitably, I followed her counsel, and instead of calling out for relief according to the fable, I kept along on my journey, with my bundle of sticks,—i.e., my arms and legs. Between ourselves, it would have been “extremely inconvenient,” as I once heard the opium-eater declare, to pay the debt of nature at that particular juncture; nor do I quite know, to be candid, when it would altogether suit me to settle it, so, like other persons in narrow circumstances, I laughed, and gossipped, and played the agreeable with all my might, and as such pleasant behaviour sometimes obtains a respite from a human creditor, who knows but that it may prove successful with the Universal Mortgagee? At all events, here I am, humming “Jack’s Alive!” and my own dear skilful native physician gives me hopes of a longer lease than appeared from the foreign reading of the covenants. He declares, indeed, that, anatomically, my heart is lower hung than usual—but what of that? The more need to keep it up!

EDITORIAL NOTE.

This new issue of Hood’s Poems has been completely revised, and will be found not only larger in size, but far richer in contents, than any previous edition. This, with the companion volume of “Serious Poems,” will be found to contain the entire poetical works of Thomas Hood. The volume has been, moreover, enriched by the addition of a large number of the highly humorous illustrations, in which Thomas Hood’s comic power was displayed.

July, 1876.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

HOOD’S POETICAL WORKS.
————
COMIC.
————

REPLY TO A PASTORAL POET.

ELL us not of bygone days!
Tell us not of forward times!
What’s the future—what’s the past—
Save to fashion rhymes?
Show us that the corn doth thrive!
Show us there’s no wintry weather!
Show us we may laugh and live—
(Those who love—together.)

Senses have we for sweet blossoms—
Eyes, which could admire the sun—
Passions blazing in our bosoms—
Hearts, that may be won!
But Labour doth for ever press us,
And Famine grins upon our board;
And none will help us, none will bless us,
With one gentle word!

None, none! our birthright or our fate,
Is hunger and inclement air—
Perpetual toil—the rich man’s hate—
Want, scorn—the pauper’s fare:
We fain would gaze upon the sky,
Lie pensive by the running springs;
But if we stay to gaze or sigh,
We starve—though the cuckoo sings!

The moon casts cold on us below;
The sun is not our own;
The very winds which fragrance blow,
But blanch us to the bone;
The rose for us ne’er shows its bloom,
The violet its blue eye;
From cradle murmuring to the tomb,
We feel no beauty, no perfume,
But only toil—and die!
Pauper.

A TALE OF TEMPER.

F all cross breeds of human sinners,
The crabbedest are those who dress our dinners;
Whether the ardent fires at which they roast
And broil and bake themselves like Smithfield martyrs,
Are apt to make them crusty, like a toast,
Or drams, encouraged by so hot a post;
However, cooks are generally Tartars;
And altogether might be safely cluster’d
In scientific catalogues
Under two names, like Dinmont’s dogs,
Pepper and Mustard.

The case thus being very common,
It followed, quite of course, when Mr. Jervis
Engaged a clever culinary woman,
He took a mere Xantippe in his service—
In fact—her metal not to burnish,
As vile a shrew as Shrewsbury could furnish—
One who in temper, language, manners, looks,
In every respect
Might just have come direct
From him, who is supposed to send us cooks.

The very day she came into her place
She slapp’d the scullion’s face;
The next, the housemaid being rather pert,
Snatching the broom, she “treated her like dirt”—
The third, a quarrel with the groom she hit on—
Cyrus, the page, had half-a-dozen knocks;
And John, the coachman, got a box
He couldn’t sit on.

Meanwhile, her strength to rally,
Brandy, and rum, and shrub she drank by stealth,
Besides the Cream of some mysterious Valley
That may, or may not, be the Vale of Health:
At least while credit lasted, or her wealth—
For finding that her blows came only thicker,
Invectives and foul names but flew the quicker,
The more she drank, the more inclined to bicker,
The other servants one and all,
Took Bible oaths whatever might befal,
Neither to lend her cash, nor fetch her liquor!

This caused, of course, a dreadful schism,
And what was worse, in spite of all endeavour,
After a fortnight of Tea-totalism,
The Plague broke out more virulent than ever!
The life she led her fellows down the stairs!
The life she led her betters in the parlour!
No parrot ever gave herself such airs,
No pug-dog cynical was such a snarler!
At woman, man, and child, she flew and snapp’d,
No rattlesnake on earth so fierce and rancorous—
No household cat that ever lapp’d
To swear and spit was half so apt—
No bear, sore-headed, could be more cantankerous—
No fretful porcupine more sharp and crabbed—
No wolverine
More full of spleen—
In short, the woman was completely rabid!

The least offence of look or phrase,
The slightest verbal joke, the merest frolic,
Like a snap-dragon set her in a blaze,
Her spirit was so alcoholic!
And woe to him who felt her tongue!
It burnt like caustic—like a nettle stung,
Her speech was scalding—scorching—vitriolic!
And larded, not with bacon fat,
Or anything so mild as that,
But curses so intensely diabolic,
So broiling hot, that he, at whom she levell’d,
Felt in his very gizzard he was devill’d!

Often and often Mr. Jervis
Long’d, and yet feared, to turn her from his service;
For why? Of all his philosophic loads
Of reptiles loathsome, spiteful, and pernicious,
Stuff’d Lizards, bottled Snakes, and pickled Toads,
Potted Tarantulas, and Asps malicious,
And Scorpions cured by scientific modes,
He had not any creature half so vicious!

At last one morning
The coachman had already given warning,
And little Cyrus
Was gravely thinking of a new cockade,
For open War’s rough sanguinary trade,
Or any other service, quite desirous,
Instead of quarrelling with such a jade—
When accident explain’d the coil she made,
And whence her Temper had derived the virus!

Struck with the fever, called the scarlet,
The Termagant was lying sick in bed—
And little Cyrus, that precocious varlet,
Was just declaring her “as good as dead,”
When down the attic stairs the housemaid, Charlotte,
Came running from the chamber overhead,
Like one demented;
Flapping her hands, and casting up her eyes,
And giving gasps of horror and surprise,
Which thus she vented—
“O Lord! I wonder that she didn’t bite us!
Or sting us like a Tantalizer,[1]
(The note will make the reader wiser,)
And set us all a dancing like St. Witus!

“Temper! No wonder that the creature had
A temper so uncommon bad!
She’s just confessed to Doctor Griper
That being out of Rum, and like denials,
Which always was prodigious trials,—
Because she couldn’t pay the piper,
She went one day, she did, to Master’s wials,
And drunk the spirit as preserved the Wiper!”

THE CAPTAIN’S COW.
A ROMANCE OF THE IRON AGE.

“Water, water everywhere,
But not a drop to drink.”—Coleridge.

T is a jolly Mariner
As ever knew the billows’ stir,
Or battled with the gale;
His face is brown, his hair is black,
And down his broad gigantic back
There hangs a platted tail.

In clusters, as he rolls along,
His tarry mates around him throng,
Who know his budget well;
Betwixt Canton and Trinidad
No Sea-Romancer ever had
Such wondrous tales to tell!

Against the mast he leans a-slope,
And thence upon a coil of rope
Slides down his pitchy “starn;”
Heaves up a lusty hem or two,
And then at once without ado
Begins to spin his yarn:—

“As from Jamaica we did come,
Laden with sugar, fruit and rum,
It blew a heavy gale:
A storm that scar’d the oldest men
For three long days and nights, and then
The wind began to fail.

“Still less and less, till on the mast
The sails began to flap at last,
The breezes blew so soft;
Just only now and then a puff,
Till soon there was not wind enough
To stir the vane aloft.

“No, not a cat’s paw anywhere:
Hold up your finger in the air
You couldn’t feel a breath
For why, in yonder storm that burst,
The wind that blew so hard at first
Had blown itself to death.

“No cloud aloft to throw a shade;
No distant breezy ripple made
The ocean dark below.
No cheering sign of any kind;
The more we whistled for the wind
The more it did not blow.

“The hands were idle, one and all;
No sail to reef against a squall;
No wheel, no steering now!
Nothing to do for man or mate,
But chew their cuds and ruminate,
Just like the Captain’s Cow.

“Day after day, day after day,
Becalm’d the Jolly Planter lay,
As if she had been moor’d:
The sea below, the sky a-top
Fierce blazing down, and not a drop
Of water left aboard!

“Day after day, day after day,
Becalm’d the Jolly Planter lay,
As still as any log;
The Parching seamen stood about,
Each with his tongue a-lolling out,
And panting like a dog—

“A dog half mad with summer heat
And running up and down the street,
By thirst quite overcome;
And not a drop in all the ship
To moisten cracking tongue and lip,
Except Jamaica rum!

“The very poultry in the coop
Began to pine away and droop—
The cock was first to go;
And glad we were on all our parts,
He used to damp our very hearts
With such a ropy crow.

“But worst it was, we did allow,
To look upon the Captain’s Cow,
That daily seemed to shrink:
Deprived of water hard or soft,
For, though we tried her oft and oft,
The brine she wouldn’t drink:

“But only turn’d her bloodshot eye,
And muzzle up towards the sky,
And gave a moan of pain,
A sort of hollow moan and sad,
As if some brutish thought she had
To pray to heav’n for rain;

“And sometimes with a steadfast stare
Kept looking at the empty air,
As if she saw beyond,
Some meadow in her native land,
Where formerly she used to stand
A-cooling in the pond.

“If I had only had a drink
Of water then, I almost think
She would have had the half:
But as for John the Carpenter,
He couldn’t more have pitied her
If he had been her calf.

“So soft of heart he was and kind
To any creature lame, or blind,
Unfortunate, or dumb:
Whereby he made a sort of vow,
In sympathising with the Cow,
To give her half his rum;—

“An oath from which he never swerved,
For surely as the rum was serv’d
He shared the cheering dram;
And kindly gave one half at least,
Or more, to the complaining beast,
Who took it like a lamb.

“At last with overclouding skies
A breeze again began to rise,
That stiffen’d to a gale:
Steady, steady, and strong it blew;
And were not we a joyous crew,
As on the Jolly Planter flew
Beneath a press of sail!

“Swiftly the Jolly Planter flew,
And were not we a joyous crew,
At last to sight the land!
A glee there was on every brow,
That like a Christian soul the Cow
Appear’d to understand.

“And was not she a mad-like thing
To land again and taste the spring,
Instead of fiery glass:
About the verdant meads to scour,
And snuff the honey’d cowslip flower,
And crop the juicy grass!

“Whereby she grew as plump and hale
As any beast that wears a tail,
Her skin as sleek as silk;
And through all parts of England now
Is grown a very famous Cow,
By giving Rum-and-Milk!”

THE DOVES AND THE CROWS.

OME all ye sable little girls and boys,
Ye coal-black Brothers—Sooty Sisters, come!
With kitty-katties make a joyful noise;
With snaky-snekies, and the Eboe drum!
From this day forth your freedom is your own:
Play, Sambo, play,—and, Obadiah, groan!

Ye vocal Blackbirds, bring your native pipes,
Your own Moor’s Melodies, ye niggers, bring;
To celebrate the fall of chains and stripes,
Sing “Possum up a gum-tree,”—roar and sing!
From this day forth your freedom is your own:
Chaunt, Sambo, chaunt,—and, Obadiah, groan!

Bring all your woolly pickaninnies dear—
Bring John Canoe and all his jolly gang:
Stretch ev’ry blubber-mouth from ear to ear,
And let the driver in his whip go hang!
From this day forth your freedom is your own:
Grin, Sambo, grin,—and, Obadiah, groan!

Your working garb indignantly renounce;
Discard your slops in honour of the day—
Come all in frill, and furbelow, and flounce,
Come all as fine as Chimney Sweeps in May—
From this day forth your freedom is your own:
Dress, Sambo, dress,—and, Obadiah, groan!

Come, join together in the dewy dance,
With melting maids in steamy mazes go;
Humanity delights to see you prance,
Up with your sooty legs and jump Jim Crow—
From this day forth your freedom is your own:
Skip, Sambo, skip,—and, Obadiah, groan!

Kiss dark Diana on her pouting lips,
And take black Phœbe by her ample waist—
Tell them to-day is Slavery’s eclipse,
And Love and Liberty must be embraced—
From this day forth your freedom is your own:
Kiss, Sambo, kiss,—and, Obadiah, groan!

With bowls of sangaree and toddy come!
Bring lemons, sugar, old Madeira, limes,
Whole tanks and water-barrels full of rum,
To toast the whitest date of modern times—
From this day forth your freedom is your own:
Drink, Sambo, drink,—and, Obadiah, groan!

Talk, all together, talk! both old and young,
Pour out the fulness of the negro heart;
Let loose the now emancipated tongue,
And all your new-born sentiments impart—
From this day forth your freedom is your own:
Spout, Sambo, spout,—and, Obadiah, groan!

Huzza! for equal rights and equal laws;
The British parliament has doff’d your chain—
Join, join in gratitude your jetty paws,
And swear you never will be slaves again—
From this day forth your freedom is your own:
Swear, Sambo, swear,—and, Obadiah, groan!

A TALE OF A TRUMPET.

“Old woman, old woman, will you go a-shearing?
Speak a little louder, for I’m very hard of hearing.”
Old Ballad.

F all old women hard of hearing,
The deafest, sure, was Dame Eleanor Spearing!
On her head, it is true,
Two flaps there grew,
That served for a pair of gold rings to go through,
But for any purpose of ears in a parley,
They heard no more than ears of barley.

No hint was needed from D. E. F.
You saw in her face that the woman was deaf:
From her twisted mouth to her eyes so peery,
Each queer feature ask’d a query;
A look that said in a silent way,
“Who? and What? and How? and Eh?
I’d give my ears to know what you say!”

And well she might! for each auricular
Was deaf as a post—and that post in particular
That stands at the corner of Dyott Street now,
And never hears a word of a row!
Ears that might serve her now and then
As extempore racks for an idle pen;
Or to hang with hoops from jewellers’ shops
With coral, ruby, or garnet drops;
Or, provided the owner so inclined,
Ears to stick a blister behind;
But as for hearing wisdom, or wit,
Falsehood, or folly, or tell-tale-tit,
Or politics, whether of Fox or Pitt,
Sermon, lecture, or musical bit,
Harp, piano, fiddle, or kit,
They might as well, for any such wish,
Have been butter’d, done brown, and laid in a dish!

She was deaf as a post,—as said before—
And as deaf as twenty similes more,
Including the adder, that deafest of snakes,
Which never hears the coil it makes.

She was deaf as a house—which modern tricks
Of language would call as deaf as bricks—
For her all human kind were dumb,
Her drum, indeed, was so muffled a drum,
That none could get a sound to come,
Unless the Devil who had Two Sticks!

She was deaf as a stone—say, one of the stones
Demosthenes suck’d to improve his tones;
And surely deafness no further could reach
Than to be in his mouth without hearing his speech!

She was deaf as a nut—for nuts, no doubt,
Are deaf to the grub that’s hollowing out—
As deaf, alas! as the dead and forgotten—
(Gray has noticed the waste of breath,
In addressing the “dull, cold ear of death”),
Or the Felon’s ear that was stuff’d with Cotton—
Or Charles the First in statue quo;
Or the still-born figures of Madame Tussaud,
With their eyes of glass, and their hair of flax,
That only stare whatever you “ax,”
For their ears, you know, are nothing but wax.

She was deaf as the ducks that swam in the pond,
And wouldn’t listen to Mrs. Bond,—
As deaf as any Frenchman appears,
When he puts his shoulders into his ears:
And—whatever the citizen tells his son—
As deaf as Gog and Magog at one!
Or, still to be a simile-seeker,
As deaf as dogs’-ears to Enfield’s Speaker!
She was deaf as any tradesman’s dummy,
Or as Pharaoh’s mother’s mother’s mummy;
Whose organs, for fear of our modern sceptics,
Were plugg’d with gums and antiseptics.

She was deaf as a nail—that you cannot hammer
A meaning into, for all your clamour—
There never was such a deaf old Gammer!
So formed to worry
Both Lindley and Murray,
By having no ear for Music or Grammar!

Deaf to sounds, as a ship out of soundings,
Deaf to verbs, and all their compoundings,
Adjective, noun, and adverb, and particle,
Deaf to even the definite article—
No verbal message was worth a pin,
Though you hired an earwig to carry it in!

In short, she was twice as deaf as Deaf Burke,
Or all the Deafness in Yearsley’s work,
Who in spite of his skill in hardness of hearing,
Boring, blasting, and pioneering,
To give the dummy organ and clearing,
Could never have cured Dame Eleanor Spearing.

Of course the loss was a great privation,
For one of her sex—whatever her station—
And none the less that the Dame had a turn
For making all families one concern,
And learning whatever there was to learn
In the prattling, tattling village of Tringham—
As who wore silk? and who wore gingham?
And what the Atkins’s shop might bring ’em?
How the Smiths contrived to live? and whether
The fourteen Murphys all pigg’d together?
The wages per week of the Weavers and Skinners,
And what they boil’d for their Sunday dinners?
What plates the Bugsbys had on the shelf,
Crockery, china, wooden, or delf?
And if the parlour of Mrs. O’Grady
Had a wicked French print, or Death and the Lady?
Did Snip and his wife continue to jangle?
Had Mrs. Wilkinson sold her mangle?
What liquor was drunk by Jones and Brown?
And the weekly score they ran up at the Crown?
If the Cobbler could read, and believed in the Pope?
And how the Grubbs were off for soap?
If the Snobbs had furnish’d their room up-stairs,
And how they managed for tables and chairs,
Beds, and other household affairs,
Iron, wooden, and Staffordshire wares?
And if they could muster a whole pair of bellows?
In fact, she had much of the spirit that lies
Perdu in a notable set of Paul Prys,
By courtesy call’d Statistical Fellows—
A prying, spying, inquisitive clan,
Who have gone upon much of the self-same plan,
Jotting the Labouring Class’s riches;
And after poking in pot and pan,
And routing garments in want of stitches,
Have ascertain’d that a working man
Wears a pair and a quarter of average breeches!

But this alas! from her loss of hearing,
Was all a seal’d book to Dame Eleanor Spearing;
And often her tears would rise to their founts—
Supposing a little scandal at play
’Twixt Mrs. O’Fie and Mrs. Au Fait—
That she couldn’t audit the Gossips’ accounts.
’Tis true, to her cottage still they came,
And ate her muffins just the same,
And drank the tea of the widow’d Dame,
And never swallow’d a thimble the less
Of something the Reader is left to guess,
For all the deafness of Mrs. S.,
Who saw them talk, and chuckle, and cough,
But to see and not share in the social flow,
She might as well have lived, you know,
In one of the houses in Owen’s Row,
Near the New River Head, with its water cut off!

And yet the almond-oil she had tried,
And fifty infallible things beside,
Hot, and cold, and thick, and thin,
Dabb’d, and dribbled, and squirted in:
But all remedies fail’d; and though some it was clear
Like the brandy and salt
(We now exalt)
Had made a noise in the public ear,
She was just as deaf as ever, poor dear!

At last—one very fine day in June—
Suppose her sitting,
Busily knitting,
And humming she didn’t quite know what tune;
For nothing she heard but a sort of a whizz,
Which, unless the sound of the circulation,
Or of thoughts in the process of fabrication,
By a Spinning-Jennyish operation,
It’s hard to say what buzzing it is.
However, except that ghost of a sound,
She sat in a silence most profound—
The cat was purring about the mat,
But her Mistress heard no more of that
Than if it had been a boatswain’s cat;
And as for the clock the moments nicking,
The Dame only gave it credit for ticking.
The bark of her dog she did not catch;
Nor yet the click of the lifted latch;
Nor yet the creak of the opening door;
Nor yet the fall of a foot on the floor—
But she saw the shadow that crept on her gown
And turn’d its skirt of a darker brown.

And lo! a man! a Pedlar! ay, marry,
With the little back-shop that such tradesmen carry
Stock’d with brooches, ribbons, and rings,
Spectacles, razors, and other odd things,
For lad and lass, as Autolycus sings;
A chapman for goodness and cheapness of ware,
Held a fair dealer enough at a fair,
But deem’d a piratical sort of invader
By him we dub the “regular trader,”
Who—luring the passengers in as they pass
By lamps, gay panels, and mouldings of brass,
And windows with only one huge pane of glass,
And his name in gilt characters, German or Roman,—
If he isn’t a Pedlar, at least he’s a Showman!

However, in the stranger came,
And, the moment he met the eyes of the Dame,
Threw her as knowing a nod as though
He had known her fifty long years ago;
And presto! before she could utter “Jack”—
Much less “Robinson”—open’d his pack—
And then from amongst his portable gear,
With even more than a Pedlar’s tact,—
(Slick himself might have envied the act)—
Before she had time to be deaf, in fact—
Popp’d a Trumpet into her ear.

“There, Ma’am! try it!
You needn’t buy it—

The last New Patent—and nothing comes nigh it
For affording the Deaf, at a little expense,
The sense of hearing, and hearing of sense!
A Real Blessing—and no mistake,
Invented for poor Humanity’s sake;
For what can be a greater privation
Than playing Dummy to all creation,
And only looking at conversation—
Great Philosophers talking like Platos,
And Members of Parliament moral as Catos,
And your ears as dull as waxy potatoes!
Not to name the mischievous quizzers,
Sharp as knives, but double as scissors,
Who get you to answer quite by guess
Yes for No, and No for Yes.”
(“That’s very true,” says Dame Eleanor S.)
“Try it again! No harm in trying—
I’m sure you’ll find it worth your buying,
A little practice—that is all—
And you’ll hear a whisper, however small,
Through an Act of Parliament party-wall,—
Every syllable clear as day,
And even what people are going to say—
I wouldn’t tell a lie, I wouldn’t,
But my Trumpets have heard what Solomon’s couldn’t;
And as for Scott he promises fine,
But can he warrant his horns like mine
Never to hear what a Lady shouldn’t—
Only a guinea—and can’t take less.”
(“That’s very dear,” says Dame Eleanor S.)

“Dear!—Oh dear, to call it dear!
Why it isn’t a horn you buy, but an ear;
Only think, and you’ll find on reflection
You’re bargaining, Ma’am, for the Voice of Affection;
For the language of Wisdom, and Virtue, and Truth,
And the sweet little innocent prattle of youth:
Not to mention the striking of clocks—
Cackle of hens—crowing of cocks—
Lowing of cow, and bull, and ox—
Bleating of pretty pastoral flocks—
Murmur of waterfall over the rocks—
Every sound that Echo mocks—
Vocals, fiddles, and musical-box—
And zounds! to call such a concert dear!
But I mustn’t ‘swear with my horn in your ear.’
Why in buying that Trumpet you buy all those
That Harper, or any trumpeter, blows
At the Queen’s Levees or the Lord Mayor’s Shows,
At least as far as the music goes,
Including the wonderful lively sound,
Of the Guards’ key-bugles all the year round:
Come—suppose we call it a pound!

“Come,” said the talkative Man of the Pack,
“Before I put my box on my back,
For this elegant, useful Conductor of Sound,
Come—suppose we call it a pound!
Only a pound! it’s only the price
Of hearing a Concert once or twice,
It’s only the fee
You might give Mr. C.
And after all not hear his advice,
But common prudence would bid you stump it;
For, not to enlarge,
It’s the regular charge
At a Fancy Fair for a penny trumpet.
Lord! what’s a pound to the blessing of hearing!
(“A pound’s a pound,” said Dame Eleanor Spearing.)

“Try it again! no harm in trying!
A pound’s a pound there’s no denying;
But think what thousands and thousands of pounds
We pay for nothing but hearing sounds:
Sounds of Equity, Justice, and Law,
Parliamentary jabber and jaw,
Pious cant and moral saw,
Hocus-pocus, and Nong-tong-paw,
And empty sounds not worth a straw;
Why it costs a guinea, as I’m a sinner,
To hear the sounds at a Public Dinner!
One pound one thrown into the puddle,
To listen to Fiddle, Faddle, and Fuddle!
Not to forget the sounds we buy
From those who sell their sounds so high,
That, unless the Managers pitch it strong,
To get a Signora to warble a song,
You must fork out the blunt with a haymaker’s prong!

“It’s not the thing for me—I know it,
To crack my own Trumpet up and blow it;
But it is the best, and time will show it.
There was Mrs. F.
So very deaf,
That she might have worn a percussion-cap,
And been knock’d on the head without hearing it snap,
Well, I sold her a horn, and the very next day
She heard from her husband at Botany Bay!
Come—eighteen shillings—that’s very low,
You’ll save the money as shillings go,
And I never knew so bad a lot,
By hearing whether they ring or not!

“Eighteen shillings! it’s worth the price,
Supposing you’re delicate-minded and nice,
To have the medical man of your choice,
Instead of the one with the strongest voice—
Who comes and asks you, how’s your liver,
And where you ache, and whether you shiver,
And as to your nerves, so apt to quiver,
As if he was hailing a boat on the river!
And then, with a shout, like Pat in a riot,
Tells you to keep yourself perfectly quiet!

“Or a tradesman comes—as tradesmen will—
Short and crusty about his bill,
Of patience, indeed, a perfect scorner,
And because you’re deaf and unable to pay,
Shouts whatever he has to say,
In a vulgar voice, that goes over the way,
Down the street and round the corner!
Come—speak your mind—it’s ‘No or Yes.’”
(“I’ve half a mind,” said Dame Eleanor S.)

“Try it again—no harm in trying,
Of course you hear me, as easy as lying;
No pain at all, like a surgical trick,
To make you squall, and struggle, and kick,
Like Juno, or Rose,
Whose ear undergoes
Such horrid tugs at membrane and gristle,
For being as deaf as yourself to a whistle!

“You may go to surgical chaps if you choose,
Who will blow up your tubes like copper flues,
Or cut your tonsils right away,
As you’d shell out your almonds for Christmas-day;
And after all a matter of doubt,
Whether you ever would hear the shout
Of the little blackguards that bawl about,
‘There you go with your tonsils out!’
Why I knew a deaf Welshman, who came from Glamorgan
On purpose to try a surgical spell,
And paid a guinea, and might as well
Have call’d a monkey into his organ!
For the Aurist only took a mug,
And pour’d in his ear some acoustical drug,
That, instead of curing, deafen’d him rather,
As Hamlet’s uncle served Hamlet’s father!
That’s the way with your surgical gentry!
And happy your luck
If you don’t get stuck
Through your liver and lights at a royal entry,
Because you never answer’d the sentry!

“Try it again, dear Madam, try it!
Many would sell their beds to buy it.
I warrant you often wake up in the night,
Ready to shake to a jelly with fright,
And up you must get to strike a light,
And down you go, in you know what,
Whether the weather is chilly or hot,—
That’s the way a cold is got,—
To see if you heard a noise or not!

“Why, bless you, a woman with organs like yours
Is hardly safe to step out of doors!
Just fancy a horse that comes full pelt,
But as quiet as if he was ‘shod with felt,’
Till he rushes against you with all his force,
And then I needn’t describe the course,
While he kicks you about without remorse,
How awkward it is to be groom’d by a horse!
Or a bullock comes, as mad as King Lear,
And you never dream that the brute is near,
Till he pokes his horn right into your ear,
Whether you like the thing or lump it,—
And all for want of buying a trumpet!

“I’m not a female to fret and vex,
But if I belonged to the sensitive sex,
Exposed to all sorts of indelicate sounds,
I wouldn’t be deaf for a thousand pounds.
Lord! only think of chucking a copper
To Jack or Bob with a timber limb,
Who looks as if he was singing a hymn,
Instead of a song that’s very improper!
Or just suppose in a public place
You see a great fellow a-pulling a face,
With his staring eyes and his mouth like an O,—
And how is a poor deaf lady to know,—
The lower orders are up to such games—
If he’s calling ‘Green Peas,’ or calling her names?”
(“They’re tenpence a peck!” said the deafest of Dames.)

“’Tis strange what very strong advising,
By word of mouth, or advertising,
By chalking on walls, or placarding on vans,
With fifty other different plans,
The very high pressure, in fact, of pressing,
It needs to persuade one to purchase a blessing!
Whether the Soothing American Syrup,
A Safety Hat or a Safety Stirrup,—
Infallible Pills for the human frame,
Or Rowland’s O-don’t-o (an ominous name)!
A Doudney’s suit which the shape so hits
That it beats all others into fits;
A Mechi’s razor for beards unshorn,
Or a Ghost-of-a-Whisper-Catching Horn!

“Try it again, Ma’am, only try!”
Was still the voluble Pedlar’s cry;
“It’s a great privation, there’s no dispute,
To live like the dumb unsociable brute,
And to hear no more of the pro and con,
And how Society’s going on,
Than Mumbo Jumbo or Prester John,
And all for want of this sine quâ non;
Whereas, with a horn that never offends,
You may join the genteelest party that is,
And enjoy all the scandal, and gossip, and quiz,
And be certain to hear of your absent friends;—
Not that elegant ladies, in fact,
In genteel society ever detract,
Or lend a brush when a friend is black’d,—
At least as a mere malicious act,—
But only talk scandal for fear some fool
Should think they were bred at charity school.
Or, maybe, you like a little flirtation,
Which even the most Don Juanish rake
Would surely object to undertake
At the same high pitch as an altercation.
It’s not for me, of course, to judge
How much a Deaf Lady ought to begrudge;
But half-a-guinea seems no great matter—
Letting alone more rational patter—
Only to hear a parrot chatter:
Not to mention that feather’d wit,
The Starling, who speaks when his tongue is slit;
The Pies and Jays that utter words,
And other Dicky Gossips of birds,
That talk with as much good sense and decorum,
As many Beaks who belong to the quorum.

“‘Try it—buy it—say ten and six,
The lowest price a miser could fix:
I don’t pretend with horns of mine,
Like some in the advertising line,
To ‘magnify sounds’ on such marvellous scales
That the sounds of a cod seem as big as a whale’s;
But popular rumours, right or wrong,—
Charity sermons, short or long,—
Lecture, speech, concerto, or song,
All noises and voices, feeble or strong,
From the hum of a gnat to the clash of a gong,
This tube will deliver distinct and clear;
Or, supposing by chance
You wish to dance,
Why, it’s putting a Horn-pipe into your ear!
Try it—buy it!
Buy it—try it!
The last New Patent, and nothing comes nigh it,
For guiding sounds to their proper tunnel:
Only try till the end of June,
And if you and the Trumpet are out of tune
I’ll turn it gratis into a funnel!”

In short, the pedlar so beset her,—
Lord Bacon couldn’t have gammon’d her better,—
With flatteries plump and indirect,
And plied his tongue with such effect,—
A tongue that could almost have butter’d a crumpet,—
The deaf old woman bought the Trumpet.
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
The pedlar was gone. With the horn’s assistance,
She heard his steps die away in the distance;
And then she heard the tick of the clock,
The purring of puss and the snoring of Shock;
And she purposely dropp’d a pin that was little,
And heard it fall as plain as a skittle!

’Twas a wonderful horn, to be but just!
Nor meant to gather dust, must and rust;
So in half a jiffy, or less than that,
In her scarlet cloak and her steeple-hat,
Like old Dame Trot, but without her cat,
The gossip was hunting all Tringham through,
As if she meant to canvass the borough,
Trumpet in hand, or up to the cavity;—
And, sure, had the horn been one of those
The wild Rhinoceros wears on his nose,
It couldn’t have ripp’d up more depravity!

Depravity! mercy shield her ears!
’Twas plain enough that her village peers
In the ways of vice were no raw beginners;
For whenever she raised the tube to her drum
Such sounds were transmitted as only come
From the very Brass Band of human sinners!
Ribald jest and blasphemous curse
(Bunyan never vented worse),
With all those weeds, not flowers, of speech
Which the Seven Dialecticians teach;
Filthy Conjunctions, and Dissolute Nouns,
And Particles pick’d from the kennels of towns,
With Irregular Verbs for irregular jobs,
Chiefly active in rows and mobs,
Picking possessive Pronouns’ fobs,
And Interjections as bad as a blight,
Or an Eastern blast, to the blood and the sight;
Fanciful phrases for crime and sin,
And smacking of vulgar lips where Gin,
Garlic, Tobacco, and offals go in—
A jargon so truly adapted, in fact,
To each thievish, obscene, and ferocious act,
So fit for the brute with the human shape,
Savage Baboon, or libidinous Ape,
From their ugly mouths it will certainly come
Should they ever get weary of shamming dumb!

Alas! for the Voice of Virtue and Truth,
And the sweet little innocent prattle of Youth!
The smallest urchin whose tongue could tang,
Shock’d the Dame with a volley of slang,
Fit for Fagin’s juvenile gang;
While the charity chap,
With his muffin cap,
His crimson coat, and his badge so garish,
Playing at dumps, or pitch in the hole,
Cursed his eyes, limbs, body and soul,
As if they didn’t belong to the Parish!

’Twas awful to hear, as she went along,
The wicked words of the popular song;
Or supposing she listen’d—as gossips will—
At a door ajar, or a window agape,
To catch the sounds they allow’d to escape,
Those sounds belong’d to Depravity still!
The dark allusion, or bolder brag
Of the dexterous “dodge,” and the lots of “swag,”
The plunder’d house—or the stolen nag—
The blazing rick, or the darker crime,
That quench’d the spark before its time—
The wanton speech of the wife immoral—
The noise of drunken or deadly quarrel,
With savage menace, which threaten’d the life,
Till the heart seem’d merely a strop “for the knife;”
The human liver, no better than that,
Which is sliced and thrown to an old woman’s cat;
And the head, so useful for shaking and nodding,
To be punch’d into holes, like “a shocking bad hat,”
That is only fit to be punch’d into wadding!

In short, wherever she turn’d the horn,
To the highly bred, or the lowly born,
The working man, who look’d over the hedge,
Or the mother nursing her infant pledge,
The sober Quaker, averse to quarrels,
Or the Governess pacing the village through,
With her twelve Young Ladies, two and two,
Looking, as such young ladies do,
Truss’d by Decorum and stuff’d with morals—
Whether she listen’d to Hob or Bob,
Nob or Snob,
The Squire on his cob,
Or Trudge and his ass at a tinkering job,
To the “Saint” who expounded at “Little Zion”—
Or the “Sinner” who kept “the Golden Lion”—
The man teetotally wean’d from liquor—
The Beadle, the Clerk, or the Reverend Vicar—
Nay, the very Pie in its cage of wicker—
She gather’d such meanings, double or single,
That like the bell,
With muffins to sell,
Her ear was kept in a constant tingle!

But this was nought to the tales of shame,
The constant runnings of evil fame,
Foul, and dirty, and black as ink,
That her ancient cronies, with nod and wink,
Pour’d in her horn like slops in a sink:
While sitting in conclave, as gossips do,
With their Hyson or Howqua, black or green,
And not a little of feline spleen
Lapp’d up in “Catty packages,” too,
To give a zest to the sipping and supping;
For still by some invisible tether,
Scandal and Tea are link’d together,
As surely as Scarification and Cupping;
Yet never since Scandal drank Bohea—
Or sloe, or whatever it happen’d to be,
For some grocerly thieves
Turn over new leaves,
Without much amending their lives or their tea—
No, never since cup was fill’d or stirr’d
Were such wild and horrible anecdotes heard,
As blacken’d their neighbours of either gender,
Especially that, which is called the Tender,
But, instead of the softness we fancy therewith,
Was harden’d in vice as the vice of a smith.

Women! the wretches! had soil’d and marr’d
Whatever to womanly nature belongs;
For the marriage tie they had no regard,
Nay, sped their mates to the sexton’s yard,
(Like Madame Laffarge, who with poisonous pinches
Kept cutting off her L by inches)—
And as for drinking, they drank so hard
That they drank their flat-irons, pokers, and tongs!
The men—they fought and gambled at fairs;
And poach’d—and didn’t respect grey hairs—
Stole linen, money, plate, poultry, and corses;
And broke in houses as well as horses;
Unfolded folds to kill their own mutton,—
And would their own mothers and wives for a button;
But not to repeat the deeds they did,
Backsliding in spite of all moral skid,
If all were true that fell from the tongue,
There was not a villager, old or young,
But deserved to be whipp’d, imprison’d, or hung,
Or sent on those travels which nobody hurries,
To publish at Colburn’s, or Longman’s, or Murray’s.

Meanwhile the Trumpet, con amore,
Transmitted each vile diabolical story;
And gave the least whisper of slips and falls,
As that Gallery does in the Dome of St. Paul’s,
Which, as all the world knows, by practice or print,
Is famous for making the most of a hint.
Not a murmur of shame,
Or buzz of blame,
Not a flying report that flew at a name,
Not a plausible gloss, or significant note,
Not a word in the scandalous circles afloat,
Of a beam in the eye, or diminutive note,
But vortex-like that tube of tin
Suck’d the censorious particle in;
And, truth to tell, for as willing an organ
As ever listen’d to serpent’s hiss,
Nor took the viperous sound amiss,
On the snaky head of an ancient Gorgon!

The Dame, it is true, would mutter “shocking!”
And give her head a sorrowful rocking,
And make a clucking with palate and tongue,
Like the call of Partlett to gather her young,
A sound, when human, that always proclaims
At least a thousand pities and shames;
But still the darker the tale of sin,
Like certain folks, when calamities burst,
Who find a comfort in “hearing the worst,”
The farther she poked the Trumpet in.
Nay, worse, whatever she heard, she spread
East and West, and North and South,
Like the ball which, according to Captain Z.,
Went in at his ear, and came out at his mouth.

What wonder between the Horn and the Dame,
Such mischief was made wherever they came,
That the parish of Tringham was all in a flame!
For although it required such loud discharges,
Such peals of thunder as rumbled at Lear,
To turn the smallest of table-beer,
A little whisper breathed into the ear
Will sour a temper “as sour as varges.”
In fact such very ill blood there grew,
From this private circulation of stories,
That the nearest neighbours the village through,
Look’d at each other as yellow and blue,
As any electioneering crew
Wearing the colours of Whigs and Tories.

Ah! well the Poet said, in sooth,
That “whispering tongues can poison Truth,”—
Yea, like a dose of oxalic acid,
Wrench and convulse poor Peace, the placid,
And rack dear Love with internal fuel,
Like arsenic pastry, or what is as cruel,
Sugar of lead, that sweetens gruel,—
At least such torments began to ring ’em
From the very morn
When that mischievous Horn
Caught the whisper of tongues in Tringham.

The Social Clubs dissolved in huffs,
And the Sons of Harmony came to cuffs,
While feuds arose and family quarrels,
That discomposed the mechanics of morals,
For screws were loose between brother and brother,
While sisters fasten’d their nails on each other;
Such wrangles, and jangles, and miff, and tiff,
And spar, and jar—and breezes as stiff
As ever upset a friendship—or skiff!
The plighted lovers, who used to walk,
Refused to meet, and declined to talk;
And wish’d for two moons to reflect the sun,
That they mightn’t look together on one;
While wedded affection ran so low,
That the oldest John Anderson snubbed his Jo—
And instead of the toddle adown the hill,
Hand in hand,
As the song has plann’d,
Scratch’d her, penniless, out of his will!

In short, to describe what came to pass
In a true, though somewhat theatrical way,
Instead of “Love in a Village”—alas!
The piece they perform’d was “The Devil to Pay!”

However, as secrets are brought to light,
And mischief comes home like chickens at night;
And rivers are track’d throughout their course,
And forgeries traced to their proper source;—
And the sow that ought
By the ear is caught,—
And the sin to the sinful door is brought;
And the cat at last escapes from the bag—
And the saddle is placed on the proper nag—
And the fog blows off, and the key is found—
And the faulty scent is pick’d out by the hound—
And the fact turns up like a worm from the ground—
And the matter gets wind to waft it about;
And a hint goes abroad, and the murder is out—
And the riddle is guess’d—and the puzzle is known—
So the truth was sniff’d, and the Trumpet was blown!
* * * * * *
’Tis a day in November—a day of fog—
But the Tringham people are all agog;
Fathers, Mothers, and Mothers’ Sons,—
With sticks, and staves, and swords, and guns,—
As if in pursuit of a rabid dog;
But their voices—raised to the highest pitch—
Declare that the game is “a Witch!—a Witch!”

Over the Green, and along by The George—
Past the Stocks, and the Church, and the Forge,
And round the Pound, and skirting the Pond,
Till they come to the whitewash’d cottage beyond,
And there at the door they muster and cluster,
And thump, and kick, and bellow, and bluster—
Enough to put Old Nick in a fluster!
A noise, indeed, so loud and long,
And mix’d with expressions so very strong,
That supposing, according to popular fame,
“Wise Woman” and Witch to be the same,
No hag with a broom would unwisely stop,
But up and away through the chimney-top;
Whereas, the moment they burst the door,
Planted fast on her sanded floor,
With her Trumpet up to her organ of hearing,
Lo and behold! Dame Eleanor Spearing!

Oh! then arises the fearful shout—
Bawl’d and scream’d, and bandied about—
“Seize her!—Drag the old Jezebel out!”
While the Beadle—the foremost of all the band,
Snatches the Horn from her trembling hand—
And after a pause of doubt and fear,
Puts it up to his sharpest ear.

“Now silence—silence—one and all!”
For the Clerk is quoting from Holy Paul!
But before he rehearses
A couple of verses,
The Beadle lets the Trumpet fall:
For instead of the words so pious and humble,
He hears a supernatural grumble.

Enough, enough! and more than enough;—
Twenty impatient hands and rough,
By arm, and leg, and neck, and scruff,
Apron, ‘kerchief, gown of stuff—
Cap, and pinner, sleeve, and cuff—
Are clutching the Witch wherever they can,
With the spite of Woman and fury of Man;
And then—but first they kill her cat,
And murder her dog on the very mat—
And crush the infernal Trumpet flat;—
And then they hurry her through the door
She never, never will enter more!

Away! away! down the dusty lane
They pull her, and haul her, with might and main;
And happy the hawbuck, Tom or Harry,
Dandy, or Sandy, Jerry, or Larry,
Who happens to get “a leg to carry!”
And happy the foot that can give her a kick,
And happy the hand that can find a brick—
And happy the fingers that hold a stick—
Knife to cut, or pin to prick—
And happy the Boy who can lend her a lick;—
Nay, happy the urchin—Charity-bred,
Who can shy very nigh to her wicked old head!

Alas! to think how people’s creeds
Are contradicted by people’s deeds!
But though the wishes that Witches utter
Can play the most diabolical rigs—
Send styes in the eye—and measle the pigs—
Grease horses’ heels—and spoil the butter;
Smut and mildew the corn on the stalk—
And turn new milk to water and chalk,—
Blight apples—and give the chickens the pip—
And cramp the stomach—and cripple the hip—
And waste the body—and addle the eggs—
And give a baby bandy legs;
Though in common belief a Witch’s curse
Involves all these horrible things, and worse—
As ignorant bumpkins all profess,
No bumpkin makes a poke the less
At the back or ribs of old Eleanor S.!
As if she were only a sack of barley!
Or gives her credit for greater might
Than the Powers of Darkness confer at night
On that other old woman, the parish Charley!

Ay, now’s the time for a Witch to call
On her Imps and Sucklings one and all—
Newes, Pyewacket, or Peck in the Crown,
(As Matthew Hopkins has handed them down)
Dick, and Willet, and Sugar-and-Sack,
Greedy Grizel, Jarmara the Black,
Vinegar Tom, and the rest of the pack—
Ay, now’s the nick for her friend Old Harry
To come “with his tail” like the bold Glengarry,
And drive her foes from their savage job
As a mad Black Bullock would scatter a mob:—
But no such matter is down in the bond;
And spite of her cries that never cease,
But scare the ducks and astonish the geese,
The Dame is dragg’d to the fatal pond!

And now they come to the water’s brim—
And in they bundle her—sink or swim;
Though it’s twenty to one that the wretch must drown,
With twenty sticks to hold her down;
Including the help to the self-same end,
Which a travelling Pedlar stops to lend.
A Pedlar!—Yes!—The same!—the same!
Who sold the Horn to the drowning Dame!
And now is foremost amid the stir,
With a token only reveal’d to her;
A token that makes her shudder and shriek,
And point with her finger, and strive to speak—
But before she can utter the name of the Devil,
Her head is under the water level!

MORAL.

There are folks about town—to name no names—
Who much resemble that deafest of Dames!
And over their tea, and muffins, and crumpets,
Circulate many a scandalous word,
And whisper tales they could only have heard
Through some such Diabolical Trumpets!

AN OPEN QUESTION.

“It is the king’s highway, that we are in, and in this way it is that thou hast placed the lions.”—Bunyan.

HAT! shut the gardens! lock the latticed gate!
Refuse the shilling and the fellow’s ticket!
And hang a wooden notice up to state,
“On Sundays no admittance at this wicket!”
The birds, the beasts, and all the reptile race
Denied to friends and visitors till Monday!
Now, really, this appears the common case
Of putting too much Sabbath into Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

The Gardens,—so unlike the ones we dub
Of Tea, wherein the artisan carouses,—
Mere shrubberies without one drop of shrub,—
Wherefore should they be closed like public-houses?
No ale is vended at the wild Deer’s Head,—
Nor rum—nor gin—not even of a Monday—
The Lion is not carved—or gilt—or red,
And does not send out porter of a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

The bear denied! the leopard under locks!
As if his spots would give contagious fevers;
The beaver close as hat within its box;
So different from other Sunday beavers!
The birds invisible—the gnaw-way rats—
The seal hermetically seal’d till Monday—
The monkey tribe—the family of cats,—
We visit other families on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

What is the brute profanity that shocks
The super-sensitively serious feeling?
The kangaroo—is he not orthodox
To bend his legs, the way he does, in kneeling?
Was strict Sir Andrew, in his sabbath coat,
Struck all a heap to see a Coati Mundi?
Or did the Kentish Plumtree faint to note
The pelicans presenting bills on Sunday?—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

What feature has repulsed the serious set?
What error in the bestial birth or breeding,
To put their tender fancies on the fret?
One thing is plain—it is not in the feeding!
Some stiffish people think that smoking joints
Are carnal sins ’twixt Saturday and Monday—
But then the beasts are pious on these points,
For they all eat cold dinners on a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

What change comes o’er the spirit of the place,
As if transmuted by some spell organic?
Turns fell hyæna of the ghoulish race?
The snake, pro tempore, the true Satanic?
Do Irish minds,—(whose theory allows
That now and then Good Friday falls on Monday)—
Do Irish minds suppose that Indian Cows
Are wicked Bulls of Bashan on a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

There are some moody fellows, not a few,
Who, turn’d by Nature with a gloomy bias,
Renounce black devils to adopt the blue,
And think when they are dismal they are pious:
Is’t possible that Pug’s untimely fun
Has sent the brutes to Coventry till Monday—
Or p’rhaps some animal, no serious one,
Was overheard in laughter on a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

What dire offence have serious fellows found
To raise their spleen against the Regent’s spinney?
Were charitable boxes handed round,
And would not guinea pigs subscribe their guinea?
Perchance the Demoiselle refused to moult
The feathers in her head—at least till Monday;
Or did the elephant unseemly, bolt
A tract presented to be read on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

At whom did Leo struggle to get loose?
Who mourns through monkey tricks his damaged clothing?
Who has been hiss’d by the Canadian goose?
On whom did Llama spit in utter loathing?
Some Smithfield saint did jealous feelings tell
To keep the Puma out of sight till Monday,
Because he played extempore as well
As certain wild Itinerants on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

To me it seems that in the oddest way
(Begging the pardon of each rigid Socius)
Our would-be keepers of the Sabbath-day
Are like the keepers of the brutes ferocious—
As soon the tiger might expect to stalk
About the grounds from Saturday till Monday
As any harmless man to take a walk,
If saints could clap him in a cage on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

In spite of all hypocrisy can spin,
As surely as I am a Christian scion,
I cannot think it is a mortal sin—
(Unless he’s loose) to look upon a lion.
I really think that one may go, perchance,
To see a bear, as guiltless as on Monday—
(That is, provided that he did not dance)
Bruin’s no worse than baking on a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

In spite of all the fanatic compiles,
I cannot think the day a bit diviner,
Because no children, with forestalling smiles,
Throng, happy, to the gates of Eden Minor—
It is not plain, to my poor faith at least,
That what we christen “Natural” on Monday,
The wondrous History of bird and beast,
Can be unnatural because it’s Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

Whereon is sinful fantasy to work?
The dove, the wing’d Columbus of man’s haven?
The tender love-bird—or the filial stork?
The punctual crane—the providential raven?
The pelican whose bosom feeds her young?
Nay, must we cut from Saturday till Monday
That feather’d marvel with a human tongue,
Because she does not preach upon a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

The busy beaver—that sagacious beast!
The sheep that owned an Oriental Shepherd—
That desert-ship the camel of the East,
The horn’d rhinoceros—the spotted leopard—
The creatures of the Great Creator’s hand
Are surely sights for better days than Monday—
The elephant, although he wears no band,
Has he no sermon in his trunk for Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

What harm if men who burn the midnight-oil,
Weary of frame, and worn and wan in feature,
Seek once a week their spirits to assoil,
And snatch a glimpse of “Animated Nature?”
Better it were if, in his best of suits,
The artisan, who goes to work on Monday,
Should spend a leisure hour amongst the brutes,
Than make a beast of his own self on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

Why, zounds! what raised so Protestant a fuss
(Omit the zounds! for which I make apology)
But that the Papists, like some fellows, thus
Had somehow mixed up Dens with their theology?
Is Brahma’s bull—a Hindoo god at home—
A papal bull to be tied up till Monday—
Or Leo, like his namesake, Pope of Rome,
That there is such a dread of them on Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

Spirit of Kant! have we not had enough
To make religion sad, and sour, and snubbish
But saints zoological must cant their stuff,
As vessels cant their ballast—rattling rubbish!
Once let the sect, triumphant to their text,
Shut Nero[2] up from Saturday till Monday,
And sure as fate they will deny us next
To see the dandelions on a Sunday—
But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?

Note.—There is an anecdote of a Scotch Professor who happened during a Sunday walk to be hammering at a geological specimen which he had picked up, when a peasant gravely accosted him, and said, very seriously, “Eh! Sir, you think you are only breaking a stone, but you are breaking the Sabbath.”

In a similar spirit, some of our over-righteous sectarians are fond of attributing all breakage to the same cause—from the smashing of a parish lamp, up to the fracture of a human skull;—the “breaking into the bloody house of life,” or the breaking into a brick-built dwelling. They all originate in the breaking of the Sabbath. It is the source of every crime in the country—the parent of every illegitimate child in the parish. The picking of a pocket is ascribed to the picking of a daisy—the robbery on the highway to a stroll in the fields—the incendiary fire to a hot dinner—on Sunday. All other causes—the want of education—the want of moral culture—the want of bread itself, are totally repudiated. The criminal himself is made to confess at the gallows that he owes his appearance on the scaffold to a walk with “Sally in our alley” on the “day that comes between a Saturday and Monday.”

Supposing this theory to be correct, and made like the law “for every degree,” the wonder of Captain Macheath that we haven’t “better company at Tyburn tree” (now the New Drop) must be fully shared by everybody who has visited the Ring in Hyde Park on the day in question. But how much greater must be the wonder of any person who has happened to reside, like myself, for a year or two in a continental city, inhabited, according to the strict construction of our Mawworms, by some fifteen or twenty thousand of habitual Sabbath-breakers, and yet, without hearing of murder and robbery as often as of blood-sausages and dollars! A city where the Burgomaster himself must have come to a bad end, if a dance upon Sunday led so inevitably to a dance upon nothing!

The “saints” having set up this absolute dependence of crime on Sabbath-breaking, their relative proportions become a fair statistical question; and, as such, the inquiry is seriously recommended to the rigid legislator, who acknowledges, indeed, that the Sabbath was “made for man,” but, by a singular interpretation, conceives that the man for whom it was made is himself!

THE TURTLES.
A FABLE.

“The rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle.”—Byron.

NE day, it was before a civic dinner,
Two London Aldermen, no matter which,
Cordwainer, Girdler, Patten-maker, Skinner—
But both were florid, corpulent, and rich,
And both right fond of festive demolition,
Set forth upon a secret expedition.
Yet not, as might be fancied from the token,
To Pudding Lane, Pie Corner, or the Street
Of Bread, or Grub, or anything to eat,
Or drink, as Milk, or Vintry, or Portsoken,
But eastward to that more aquatic quarter,
Where folks take water,
Or bound on voyages, secure a berth
For Antwerp or Ostend, Dundee or Perth,
Calais, Boulogne, or any Port on earth!
Jostled and jostling, through the mud,
Peculiar to the Town of Lud,
Down narrow streets and crooked lanes they dived,
Past many a gusty avenue, through which
Came yellow fog, and smell of pitch,
From barge, and boat, and dusky wharf derived;
With darker fumes, brought eddying by the draught,
From loco-smoko-motive craft;
Mingling with scents of butter, cheese, and gammons,
Tea, coffee, sugar, pickles, rosin, wax,
Hides, tallow, Russia-matting, hemp and flax,
Salt-cod, red-herrings, sprats, and kipper’d salmons,
Nuts, oranges, and lemons,
Each pungent spice, and aromatic gum,
Gas, pepper, soaplees, brandy, gin, and rum;
Alamode-beef and greens—the London soil—
Glue, coal, tobacco, turpentine and oil,
Bark, assafœtida, squills, vitriol, hops,
In short, all whiffs, and sniffs, and puffs and snuffs,
From metals, minerals, and dyewood stuffs,
Fruits, victual, drink, solidities, or slops—
In flasks, casks, bales, trucks, waggons, taverns, shops,
Boats, lighters, cellars, wharfs, and warehouse-tops,
That, as we walk upon the river’s ridge,
Assault the nose—below the bridge.

A walk, however, as tradition tells,
That once a poor blind Tobit used to choose,
Because, incapable of other views,
He met with “such a sight of smells.”

But on, and on, and on,
In spite of all unsavoury shocks,
Progress the stout Sir Peter and Sir John,
Steadily steering ship-like for the docks—
And now they reach a place the Muse, unwilling,
Recalls for female slang and vulgar doing,
The famous Gate of Billing,
That does not lead to cooing—
And now they pass that House that is so ugly
A Customer to people looking “smuggley”—
And now along that fatal Hill they pass
Where centuries ago an Oxford bled,
And proved—too late to save his life, alas!—
That he was “off his head.”

At last before a lofty brick-built pile
Sir Peter stopp’d, and with mysterious smile
Tingled a bell that served to bring
The wire-drawn genius of the ring,
A species of commercial Samuel Weller—
To whom Sir Peter—tipping him a wink,
And something else to drink—
“Show us the cellar.”

Obsequious bow’d the man, and led the way
Down sundry flights of stairs, where windows small,
Dappled with mud, let in a dingy ray—
A dirty tax, if they were tax’d at all.

At length they came into a cellar damp,
With venerable cobwebs fringed around,
A cellar of that stamp
Which often harbours vintages renown’d,
The feudal Hock, or Burgundy the courtly,
With sherry, brown or golden,
Or port, so olden,
Bereft of body ’tis no longer portly—
But old or otherwise—to be veracious—
That cobwebb’d cellar, damp, and dim, and spacious,
Held nothing crusty—but crustaceous.

Prone, on the chilly floor,
Five splendid Turtles—such a five!
Natives of some West Indian shore,
Were flapping all alive,
Late landed from the Jolly Planter’s yawl—
A sight whereon the dignitaries fix’d
Their eager eyes, with ecstacy unmix’d,
Like fathers that behold their infants crawl,
Enjoying every little kick and sprawl.
Nay—far from fatherly the thoughts they bred
Poor loggerheads from far Ascension ferried!
The Aldermen too plainly wish’d them dead
And Aldermanbury’d!

“There!” cried Sir Peter, with an air
Triumphant as an ancient victor’s,
And pointing to the creatures rich and rare,
“There’s picters!”

“Talk of Olympic Games! They’re not worth mention;
The real prize for wrestling is when Jack,
In Providence or Ascension,
Can throw a lively turtle on its back!”

“Aye!” cried Sir John, and with a score of nods,
Thoughtful of classical symposium,
“There’s food for Gods!
There’s nectar! there’s ambrosium!
There’s food for Roman Emperors to eat—
Oh, there had been a treat
(Those ancient names will sometimes hobble us)
For Helio-gobble-us!”

“There were a feast for Alexander’s Feast!
The real sort—none of your mock or spurious!”
And then he mention’d Aldermen deceased,
And “Epicurius,”
And how Tertullian had enjoy’d such foison;
And speculated on that verdigrease
That isn’t poison.

“Talk of your Spring, and verdure, and all that!
Give me green fat!
As for your Poets with their groves of myrtles
And billing turtles,
Give me, for poetry, them Turtles there,
A-billing in a bill of fare!”

“Of all the things I ever swallow—
Good, well-dressed turtle beats them hollow—
It almost makes me wish, I vow,
To have two stomachs, like a cow!”
And lo! as with the cud, an inward thrill
Upheaved his waistcoat and disturb’d his frill,
His mouth was oozing and he work’d his jaw—
“I almost think that I could eat one raw!”

And thus, as “inward love breeds outward talk,”
The portly pair continued to discourse;
And then—as Gray describes of life’s divorce—
With “longing lingering look” prepared to walk,—
Having thro’ one delighted sense, at least,
Enjoy’d a sort of Barmecidal feast,
And with prophetic gestures, strange to see,
Forestall’d the civic Banquet yet to be,
Its callipash and callipee!

A pleasant prospect—but alack!
Scarcely each Alderman had turn’d his back,
When seizing on the moment so propitious,
And having learn’d that they were so delicious
To bite and sup,
From praises so high flown and injudicious,—
And nothing could be more pernicious!
The turtles fell to work, and ate each other up!

MORAL.

Never, from folly or urbanity,
Praise people thus profusely to their faces,
Till quite in love with their own graces,
They’re eaten up by vanity!

TOWN AND COUNTRY.

AN ODE.

O! Well may poets make a fuss
In summer time, and sigh “O rus!”
Of London pleasures sick:
My heart is all at pant to rest
In greenwood shades—my eyes detest
This endless meal of brick!

What joy have I in June’s return?
My feet are parch’d, my eyeballs burn,
I scent no flowery gust:
But faint the flagging zephyr springs,
With dry Macadam on its wings,
And turns me “dust to dust.”

My sun his daily course renews
Due east, but with no Eastern dews;
The path is dry and hot!
His setting shows more tamely still,
He sinks behind no purple hill,
But down a chimney’s pot!

O! but to hear the milkmaid blithe,
Or early mower wet his scythe
The dewy meads among!—
My grass is of that sort, alas!
That makes no hay—called sparrow-grass
By folks of vulgar tongue!

O! but to smell the woodbines sweet!
I think of cowslip cups—but meet
With very vile rebuffs!
For meadow-buds I get a whiff
Of Cheshire cheese,—or only sniff
The turtle made at Cuft’s.

How tenderly Rousseau reviewed
His periwinkles!—mine are stewed!
My rose blooms on a gown!—
I hunt in vain for eglantine,
And find my blue-bell on the sign
That marks the Bell and Crown:

Where are ye, birds! that blithely wing
From tree to tree, and gaily sing
Or mourn in thickets deep?
My cuckoo has some ware to sell,
The watchman is my Philomel,
My blackbird is a sweep!

Where are ye, linnet, lark, and thrush!
That perch on leafy bough and bush,
And tune the various song?
Two hurdigurdists, and a poor
Street-Handel grinding at my door,
Are all my “tuneful throng.”

Where are ye, early-purling streams,
Whose waves reflect the morning beams,
And colours of the skies?
My rills are only puddle-drains
From shambles, or reflect the stains
Of calimanco-dyes!

Sweet are the little brooks that run
O’er pebbles glancing in the sun,
Singing in soothing tones:—
Not thus the city streamlets flow;
They make no music as they go,
Though never “off the stones.”

Where are ye, pastoral pretty sheep,
That wont to bleat, and frisk, and leap
Beside your woolly dams?
Alas! instead of harmless crooks,
My Corydons use iron hooks,
And skin—not shear—the lambs.

The pipe whereon, in olden day,
The Arcadian herdsman used to play
Sweetly, here soundeth not;
But merely breathes unwholesome fumes,
Meanwhile the city boor consumes
The rank weed—“piping hot.”

All rural things are vilely mock’d,
On every hand the sense is shock’d,
With objects hard to bear:
Shades—vernal shades!—where wine is sold!
And, for a turfy bank, behold
An Ingram’s rustic chair!

Where are ye, London meads and bowers,
And gardens redolent of flowers
Wherein the zephyr wons?
Alas! Moor Fields are fields no more.
See Hatton’s Gardens bricked all o’er,
And that bare wood—St. John’s.

No pastoral scenes procure me peace;
I hold no Leasowes in my lease,
No cot set round with trees:
No sheep-white hill my dwelling flanks;
And Omnium furnishes my banks
With brokers—not with bees.

O! well may poets make a fuss
In summer time, and sigh “O rus!”
Of city pleasures sick:
My heart is all at pant to rest
In greenwood shades—my eyes detest
That endless meal of brick!

NO!

No sun—no moon!
No morn—no noon—
No dawn—no dusk—no proper time of day—
No sky—no earthly view—
No distance looking blue—
No road—no street—no “t’other side the way”—
No end to any Row—
No indications where the Crescents go—
No top to any steeple—
No recognitions of familiar people—
No courtesies for showing ’em—
No knowing ’em!—
No travelling at all—no locomotion,
No inkling of the way—no notion—
“No go”—by land or ocean—
No mail—no post—
No news from any foreign coast—
No Park—no Ring—no afternoon gentility—
No company—no nobility—
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member—
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,—
November!

THE LOST HEIR.

“Oh, where, and oh where
Is my bonny laddie gone?”—Old Song

NE day, as I was going by
That part of Holborn christened High,
I heard a loud and sudden cry
That chill’d my very blood;
And lo! from out a dirty alley,
Where pigs and Irish wont to rally,
I saw a crazy woman sally,
Bedaub’d with grease and mud.
She turn’d her East, she turn’d her West,
Staring like Pythoness possest,
With streaming hair and heaving breast
As one stark mad with grief.
This way and that she wildly ran,
Jostling with woman and with man—
Her right hand held a frying pan,
The left a lump of beef.
At last her frenzy seem’d to reach
A point just capable of speech,
And with a tone almost a screech,
As wild as ocean birds,
Or female Ranter mov’d to preach,
She gave her “sorrow words.”

“Oh Lord! oh dear, my heart will break, I shall go stick stark staring wild!
Has ever a one seen anything about the streets like a crying lost-looking child?
Lawk help me, I don’t know where to look, or to run, if I only knew which way—
A child as is lost about London streets, and especially Seven Dials, is a needle in a bottle of hay.
I am all in a quiver—get out of my sight, do, you wretch, you little Kitty M’Nab!
You promised to have half an eye on him, you know you did, you dirty deceitful young drab.
The last time as ever I see him, poor thing, was with my own blessed Motherly eyes,
Sitting as good as gold in the gutter, a playing at making little dirt pies.
I wonder he left the court where he was better off than all the other young boys,
With two bricks, an old shoe, nine oyster-shells, and a dead kitten by way of toys.
When his father comes home, and he always comes home as sure as ever the clock strikes one,
He’ll be rampant, he will, at his child being lost; and the beef and the inguns not done!
La bless you, good folks, mind your own consarns, and don’t be making a mob in the street;
Oh Serjeant M’Farlane! you have not come across my poor little boy, have you, in your beat?
Do, good people, move on! don’t stand staring at me like a parcel of stupid stuck pigs;
Saints forbid! but he’s p’r’aps been inviggled away up a court for the sake of his clothes by the prigs;
He’d a very good jacket, for certain, for I bought it myself for a shilling one day in Rag Fair;
And his trousers considering not very much patch’d, and red plush, they was once his Father’s best pair.
His shirt, it’s very lucky I’d got washing in the tub, or that might have gone with the rest;
But he’d got on a very good pinafore with only two slits and a burn on the breast.
He’d a goodish sort of hat, if the crown was sew’d in, and not quite so much jagg’d at the brim.
With one shoe on, and the other shoe is a boot, and not a fit, and you’ll know by that if it’s him.
Except being so well dress’d my mind would misgive, some old beggar woman in want of an orphan,
Had borrow’d the child to go a begging with, but I’d rather see him laid out in his coffin!
Do, good people, move on, such a rabble of boys! I’ll break every bone of ’em I come near,
Go home—you’re spilling the porter—go home—Tommy Jones, go along home with your beer.
This day is the sorrowfullest day of my life, ever since my name was Betty Morgan,
Them vile Savoyards! they lost him once before all along of following a Monkey and an Organ.
Oh my Billy—my head will turn right round—if he’s got kiddynapp’d with them Italians,
They’ll make him a plaster parish image boy, they will, the outlandish tatterdemalions.
Billy—where are you, Billy?—I’m as hoarse as a crow, with screaming for ye, you young sorrow!
And shan’t have half a voice, no more I shan’t, for crying fresh herrings to-morrow.
Oh Billy, you’re bursting my heart in two, and my life won’t be of no more vally,
If I’m to see other folks’ darlins, and none of mine, playing like angels in our alley.
And what shall I do but cry out my eyes, when I looks at the old three-legged chair
As Billy used to make coach and horses of, and there an’t no Billy there!
I would run all the wide world over to find him, if I only know’d where to run,
Little Murphy, now I remember, was once lost for a month through stealing a penny bun,—
The Lord forbid of any child of mine! I think it would kill me raily
To find my Bill holdin’ up his little innocent hand at the Old Bailey.
For though I say it as oughtn’t, yet I will say, you may search for miles and mileses
And not find one better brought up, and more pretty behaved, from one end to t’other of St. Giles’s.
And if I call’d him a beauty, it’s no lie, but only as a Mother ought to speak;
You never set eyes on a more handsomer face, only it hasn’t been wash’d for a week;
As for hair, tho’ it’s red, it’s the most nicest hair when I’ve time to just show it the comb;
I’ll owe ’em five pounds, and a blessing besides, as will only bring him safe and sound home.
He’s blue eyes, and not to be call’d a squint, though a little cast he’s certainly got;
And his nose is still a good un, tho’ the bridge is broke, by his falling on a pewter pint pot;
He’s got the most elegant wide mouth in the world, and very large teeth for his age;
And quite as fit as Mrs. Murdockson’s child to play Cupid on the Drury Lane Stage.
And then he has got such dear winning ways—but oh I never never shall see him no more!
O dear! to think of losing him just after nursing him back from death’s door!
Only the very last month when the windfalls, hang ’em, was at twenty a penny!
And the threepence he’d got by grottoing was spent in plums, and sixty for a child is too many.
And the Cholera man came and whitewash’d us all and, drat him, made a seize of our hog.
It’s no use to send the Crier to cry him about, he’s such a blunderin’ drunken old dog;
The last time he was fetch’d to find a lost child, he was guzzling with his bell at the Crown,
And went and cried a boy instead of a girl, for a distracted Mother and Father about Town.
Billy—where are you, Billy, I say? come Billy, come home, to your best of Mothers!
I’m scared when I think of them Cabroleys, they drive so, they’d run over their own Sisters and Brothers.
Or may be he’s stole by some chimbly sweeping wretch, to stick fast in narrow flues and what not,
And be poked up behind with a picked pointed pole, when the soot has ketch’d, and the chimbly’s red hot.
Oh I’d give the whole wide world, if the world was mine, to clap my two longin’ eyes on his face.
For he’s my darlin of darlins, and if he don’t soon come back, you’ll see me drop stone dead on the place.
I only wish I’d got him safe in these two Motherly arms, and wouldn’t I hug him and kiss him!
Lauk! I never knew what a precious he was—but a child don’t not feel like a child till you miss him.
Why there he is! Punch and Judy hunting, the young wretch, it’s that Billy as sartin as sin!
But let me get him home, with a good grip of his hair, and I’m blest if he shall have a whole bone in his skin!”

SHE IS FAR FROM THE LAND.

ABLES entangling her,
Shipspars for mangling her,
Ropes, sure of strangling her;
Blocks over-dangling her;
Tiller to batter her,
Topmast to shatter her,
Tobacco to spatter her;
Boreas blustering,
Boatswain quite flustering,
Thunder clouds mustering
To blast her with sulphur—
If the deep don’t engulph her;
Sometimes fear’s scrutiny
Pries out a mutiny,
Sniffs conflagration,
Or hints at starvation:—
All the sea-dangers,
Buccaneers, rangers,
Pirates, and Sallee-men,
Algerine galleymen,
Tornadoes and typhons,
And horrible syphons,
And submarine travels
Thro’ roaring sea-navels;
Every thing wrong enough,
Long boat not long enough,
Vessel not strong enough;
Pitch marring frippery,
The deck very slippery,
And the cabin—built sloping,
The Captain a-toping,
And the Mate a blasphemer,
That names his Redeemer,—
With inward uneasiness;
The cook, known by greasiness,
The victuals beslubber’d,
Her bed—in a cupboard;
Things of strange christening,
Snatch’d in her listening,
Blue lights and red lights
And mention of dead lights,
And shrouds made a theme of,
Things horrid to dream of,—
And buoys in the water
To fear all exhort her;
Her friend no Leander,
Herself no sea gander,
And ne’er a cork jacket
On board of the packet;
The breeze still a stiffening,
The trumpet quite deafening;
Thoughts of repentance,
And doomsday and sentence;
Everything sinister,
Not a church minister,—
Pilot a blunderer,
Coral reefs under her,
Ready to sunder her;
Trunks tipsy-topsy,
The ship in a dropsy;
Waves oversurging her,
Syrens a-dirgeing her;
Sharks all expecting her,
Sword-fish dissecting her,
Crabs with their hand-vices
Punishing land vices;
Sea-dogs and unicorns,
Things with no puny horns,
Mermen carnivorous—
“Good Lord deliver us!”

ANACREONTIC.
BY A FOOTMAN.

T’S wery well to talk in praise
Of Tea and Water-drinking ways,
In proper time and place;
Of sober draughts, so clear and cool,
Dipp’d out of a transparent pool
Reflecting heaven’s face.

Of babbling brooks, and purling rills,
And streams as gushes from the hills,
It’s wery well to talk;—
But what becomes of all sich schemes,
With ponds of ice, and running streams
As doesn’t even walk?

A PUBLIC DINNER.

A DAY’S SPORT ON THE MOORS.

When Winter comes with piercing cold,
And all the rivers, new or old,
Is frozen far and wide;
And limpid springs is solid stuff,
And crystal pools is hard enough
To skate upon and slide;—

What then are thirsty men to do,
But drink of ale, and porter too,
Champagne as makes a fizz;
Port, sherry, or the Rhenish sort,
And p’rhaps a drop of summut short—
The water-pipes is friz!

THE FORLORN SHEPHERD’S COMPLAINT.
AN UNPUBLISHED POEM, FROM SYDNEY.

ELL! Here I am—no Matter how it suits,
A-keeping Company with them dumb Brutes,
Old Park vos no bad Judge—confound his vig!
Of vot vood break the Sperrit of a Prig!

“The like of Me, to come to New Sow Wales
To go a-tagging arter Vethers’ Tails
And valk in Herbage as delights the Flock,
But stinks of Sweet Herbs vorser nor the Dock!

“To go to set this solitary Job
To Von whose Vork vos alvay in a Mob!
It’s out of all our Lines, for sure I am
Jack Shepherd even never kep a Lamb!

“I arn’t ashamed to say I sit and veep
To think of Seven Years of keepin Sheep,
The spooniest Beasts in Nater, all to Sticks,
And not a Votch to take for all their Ticks!

“If I’d fore-seed how Transports vood turn out
To only Baa! and Botanize about,
I’d quite as leaf have had the t’other Pool,
And come to Cotton as to all this Vool!

“Von only happy moment I have had
Since here I come to be a Farmer’s Cad,
And then I cotch’d a vild Beast in a Snooze,
And pick’d her Pouch of three young Kangaroos!

“Vot chance have I to go to Race or Mill?
Or show a sneaking Kindness for a Till;
And as for Vashings, on a hedge to dry,
I’d put the Natives’ Linen in my Eye!

“If this whole Lot of Mutton I could scrag,
And find a fence to turn it into Swag,
I’d give it all in Lonnon Streets to stand,
And if I had my pick, I’d say the Strand!

“But ven I goes, as maybe vonce I shall,
To my old crib to meet with Jack, and Sal,
I’ve been so gallows honest in this Place,
I shan’t not like to show my sheepish Face.

“It’s wery hard for nothing but a Box
Of Irish Blackguard to be keepin’ Flocks,
‘Mong naked Blacks, sich Savages to hus,
They’ve nayther got a Poker nor a Pus.

“But Folks may tell their Troubles till they’re sick
To dumb brute Beasts,—and so I’ll cut my Stick!
And vot’s the Use a Feller’s Eyes to pipe
Vere von can’t borrow any Gemman’s Vipe?’

HUGGINS AND DUGGINS.
A PASTORAL AFTER POPE.

WO swains or clowns—but call them swains—
While keeping flocks on Salisbury Plains,
For all that tend on sheep as drovers,
Are turned to songsters, or to lovers,
Each of the lass he called his dear,
Began to carol loud and clear.

First Huggins sang, and Duggins then,
In the way of ancient shepherd men;
Who thus alternate hitch’d in song,
“All things by turns, and nothing long.”

HUGGINS.

Of all the girls about our place,
There’s one beats all in form and face,
Search through all Great and Little Bumpstead,
You’ll only find one Peggy Plumpstead.

DUGGINS.

To groves and streams I tell my flame,
I make the cliffs repeat her name:
When I’m inspired by gills and noggins,
The rocks re-echo Sally Hoggins!

HUGGINS.

When I am walking in the grove,
I think of Peggy as I rove.
I’d carve her name on every tree,
But I don’t know my A, B, C.

DUGGINS.

Whether I walk in hill or valley,
I think of nothing else but Sally.
I’d sing her praise, but I can sing
No song, except “God save the King.”

HUGGINS.

My Peggy does all nymphs excel,
And all confess she bears the bell,—
Where’er she goes swains flock together,
Like sheep that follow the bellwether.

DUGGINS.

Sally is tall and not too straight,—
Those very poplar shapes I hate;
But something twisted like an S,—
A crook becomes a shepherdess.

HUGGINS.

When Peggy’s dog her arms imprison,
I often wish my lot was hisn;
How often I should stand and turn,
To get a pat from hands like hern.

DUGGINS.

I tell Sall’s lambs how blest they be,
To stand about and stare at she;
But when I look, she turns and shies,
And won’t bear none but their sheep’s-eyes?

HUGGINS.

Love goes with Peggy where she goes,—
Beneath her smile the garden grows;
Potatoes spring, and cabbage starts,
’Tatoes have eyes, and cabbage hearts!

HUGGINS.

Where Sally goes it’s always spring,
Her presence brightens every thing;
The sun smiles bright, but where her grin is,
It makes brass farthings look like guineas.

HUGGINS.

For Peggy I can have no joy,
She’s sometimes kind, and sometimes coy,
And keeps me, by her wayward tricks,
As comfortless as sheep with ticks.

DUGGINS.

Sally is ripe as June or May,
And yet as cold as Christmas day;
For when she’s asked to change her lot,
Lamb’s wool,—but Sally, she wool not.

SEE-VIEW—BROAD STAIRS.

THE ISLE OF MAN.

HUGGINS.

Only with Peggy and with health,
I’d never wish for state or wealth;
Talking of having health and more pence,
I’d drink her health if I had fourpence.

DUGGINS.

Oh, how that day would seem to shine,
If Sally’s banns were read with mine;
She cries, when such a wish I carry,
“Marry come up!” but will not marry.

PAIN IN A PLEASURE-BOAT.
A SEA ECLOCUE.

“I apprehend you!”—School of Reform.

Boatman.

HOVE off there!—ship the rudder, Bill—cast off! she’s under way!

Mrs. F.

She’s under what?—I hope she’s not! good gracious, what a spray!

Boatman.

Run out the jib, and rig the boom! keep clear of those two brigs!

Mrs. F.

I hope they don’t intend some joke by running of their rigs!

Boatman.

Bill, shift them bags of ballast aft—she’s rather out of trim!

Mrs. F.

Great bags of stones! they’re pretty things to help a boat to swim!

Boatman.

The wind is fresh—if she don’t scud, it’s not the breeze’s fault!

Mrs. F.

Wind fresh, indeed, I never felt the air so full of salt!

Boatman.

That schooner, Bill, harn’t left the roads, with oranges and nuts!

Mrs. F.

If seas have roads, they’re very rough—I never felt such ruts!

Boatman.

Its neap, ye see, she’s heavy lade, and couldn’t pass the bar.

Mrs. F.

The bar! what, roads with turnpikes too? I wonder where they are!

Boatman.

Ho! brig ahoy! hard up! hard up! that lubber cannot steer!

Mrs. F.

Yes, yes,—hard up upon a rock! I know some danger’s near!
Lord, there’s a wave! it’s coming in! and roaring like a bull!

Boatman.

Nothing, Ma’am, but a little slop! go large, Bill! keep her full!

Mrs. F.

What, keep her full! what daring work! when full, she must go down!

Boatman.

Why, Bill, it lulls! ease off a bit—it’s coming off the town!
Steady your helm! we’ll clear the Pint! lay right for yonder pink!

Mrs. F.

Be steady—well, I hope they can! but they’ve got a pint of drink!

Boatman.

Bill, give that sheet another haul—she’ll fetch it up this reach.

Mrs. F.

I’m getting rather pale, I know, and they see it by that speech!
I wonder what it is, now, but—I never felt so queer!

Boatman.

Bill, mind your luff—why Bill, I say, she’s yawing—keep her near!

Mrs. F.

Keep near! we’re going further off; the land’s behind our backs.

Boatman.

Be easy, Ma’am, it’s all correct, that’s only ‘cause we tacks:
We shall have to beat about a bit,—Bill, keep her out to sea.

Mrs. F.

Beat who about? keep who at sea?—how black they look at me!

Boatman.

It’s veering round—I knew it would! oft with her head! stand by!

Mrs. F.

Off with her head! whose? where? what with?—an axe I seem to spy!

Boatman.

She can’t not keep her own, you see; we shall have to pull her in!

Mrs. F.

They’ll drown me, and take all I have! my life’s not worth a pin!

Boatman.

Look out you know, be ready, Bill—just when she takes the sand!

Mrs. F.

The sand—O Lord! to stop my mouth! how every thing is plann’d!

Boatman.

The handspike, Bill—quick, bear a hand! now Ma’am, just step ashore!

Mrs. F.

What! an’t I going to be kill’d—and welter’d in my gore?
Well, Heaven be praised! but I’ll not go a-sailing any more!

GOG AND MAGOG.
A GUILDHALL DUET.

MAGOG.

Why, Gog, I say, it’s after One,
And yet no dinner carved;
Shall we endure this sort of fun,
And stand here to be starved?

GOG.

I really think our City Lords
Must be a shabby set;
I’ve stood here since King Charles’s time,
And had no dinner yet!

MAGOG.

I vow I can no longer stay;
I say, are we to dine to-day?

GOG.

My hunger would provoke a saint,
I’ve waited till I’m sick and faint;
I’ll tell you what, they’ll starve us both,
I’ll tell you what, they’ll stop our growth.

MAGOG.

I wish I had a round of beef
My hungry tooth to charm;
I’ve wind enough in my inside
To play the Hundredth Psalm.

GOG.

And yet they feast beneath our eyes
Without the least remorse;
This very week I saw the Mayor
A feeding like a horse!

MAGOG.

Such loads of fish, and flesh, and fowl,
To think upon it makes me growl!

GOG.

I wonder where the fools were taught,
That they should keep a giant short!
They’ll stop our growth, they’ll stop our growth;
They’ll starve us both, they’ll starve us both!

MAGOG.

They said, a hundred years ago,
That we should dine at One;
Why, Gog, I say, our meat by this
Is rather over-done.

GOG.

I do not want it done at all,
So hungry is my maw,
Give me an Alderman in chains,
And I will eat him raw!

MAGOG.

Of starving weavers they discuss,
And yet they never think of us.
I say, are we to dine to-day;
Are we to dine to-day?

GOG.

Oh dear, the pang it is to feel
So mealy-mouthed without a meal!

MAGOG.

I’ll tell you what, they’ll stop our growth!

GOG.

I’ll tell you what, they’ll starve us both!

BOTH.

They’ll stop our growth, they’ll starve us both!

THE SWEEP’S COMPLAINT.

“I like to meet a sweep—such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little professional notes, sounding like the peep, peep of a young sparrow.”—Essays of Elia.

——“A voice cried Sweep no more!
Macbeth hath murdered sweep.”—Shakspeare.

NE morning ere my usual time
I rose, about the seventh chime,
When little stunted boys that climb
Still linger in the street:
And as I walked, I saw indeed
A sample of the sooty breed,
Though he was rather run to seed,
In height about five feet.
A mongrel tint he seem’d to take,
Poetic simile to make,
Day through his Martin ‘gan to break,
Quite overcoming jet.
From side to side he cross’d oblique,
Like Frenchman who has friends to seek,
And yet no English word can speak,
He walk’d upon the fret:
And while he sought the dingy job,
His lab’ring breast appear’d to throb
And half a hiccup half a sob
Betray’d internal woe.
To cry the cry he had by rote
He yearn’d, but law forbade the note,
Like Chanticleer with roupy throat,
He gaped—but not a crow!
I watch’d him, and the glimpse I snatch’d
Disclosed his sorry eyelids patch’d
With red, as if the soot had catch’d
That hung about the lid;
And soon I saw the tear-drop stray,
He did not care to brush away;
Thought I the cause he will betray—
And thus at last he did.

Well, here’s a pretty go! here’s a Gagging Act, if ever there was a gagging!
But I’m bound the members as silenced us, in doing it had plenty of magging.
They had better send us all off, they had, to the School for the Deaf and Dumb,
To unlarn us our mother tongues, and to make signs and be regularly mum.
But they can’t undo natur—as sure as ever the morning begins to peep,
Directly I open my eyes, I can’t help calling out Sweep
As natural as the sparrows among the chimbley-pots that say Cheep!
For my own part I find my suppress’d voice very uneasy,
And comparable to nothing but having your tissue stopt when you are sneezy.
Well, it’s all up with us! tho’ I suppose we mustn’t cry all up.
Here’s a precious merry Christmas, I’m blest if I can earn either bit or sup!
If crying Sweep, of mornings, is going beyond quietness’s border,
Them as pretends to be fond of silence oughtn’t to cry hear, hear, and order, order.
I wonder Mr. Sutton, as we’ve sut-on too, don’t sympathise with us
As a Speaker what don’t speak, and that’s exactly our own cus.
God help us if we don’t not cry, how are we to pursue our callings?
I’m sure we’re not half so bad as other businesses with their bawlings.
For instance, the general postmen, that at six o’clock go about ringing,
And wake up all the babbies that their mothers have just got to sleep with singing.
Greens oughtn’t to be cried no more than blacks—to do the unpartial job,
If they bring in a Sooty Bill, they ought to have brought in a Dusty Bob.
Is a dustman’s voice more sweet than ourn, when he comes a seeking arter the cinders,
Instead of a little boy like a blackbird in spring, singing merrily under your windows?
There’s the omnibus cads as plies in Cheapside, and keeps calling out Bank and City;
Let his Worship, the Mayor, decide if our call of Sweep is not just as pretty.
I can’t see why the Jews should be let go about crying Old Close thro’ their hooky noses,
And Christian laws should be ten times more hard than the old stone laws of Moses.
Why isn’t the mouths of the muffin-men compell’d to be equally shut?
Why, because Parliament members eat muffins, but they never eat no sut.
Next year there won’t be any May-day at all, we shan’t have no heart to dance,
And Jack in the Green will go in black like mourning for our mischance;
If we live as long as May, that’s to say, through the hard winter and pinching weather,
For I don’t see how we’re to earn enough to keep body and soul together.
I only wish Mr. Wilberforce or some of them that pities the niggers,
Would take a peep down in our cellars, and look at our miserable starving figures,
A-sitting idle on our empty sacks, and all ready to eat each other,
And a brood of little ones crying for bread to a heart-breaking Father and Mother.
They haven’t a rag of clothes to mend, if their mothers had thread and needles,
But crawl naked about the cellars, poor things, like a swarm of common black beadles.
If they’d only inquired before passing the Act and taken a few such peeps,
I don’t think that any real gentleman would have set his face against sweeps.
Climbin’s an ancient respectable art, and if History’s of any vally,
Was recommended by Queen Elizabeth to the great Sir Walter Raleigh,
When he wrote on a pane of glass how I’d climb, if the way I only knew,
And she writ beneath, if your heart’s afeard, don’t venture up the flue.
As for me I was always loyal, and respected all powers that are higher,
But how can I now say God save the King, if I an’t to be a Cryer?
There’s London milk, that’s one of the cries, even on Sunday the law allows,
But ought black sweeps, that are human beasts, to be worser off than black cows?
Do we go calling about, when it’s church time, like the noisy Billingsgate vermin,
And disturb the parson with “All alive O!” in the middle of a funeral sermon?
But the fish won’t keep, not the mackarel won’t, is the cry of the Parliament elves,
Every thing, except the sweeps I think, is to be allowed to keep themselves!
Lord help us! what’s to become of us if we mustn’t cry no more?
We shan’t do for black mutes to go a standing at a death’s door.
And we shan’t do to emigrate, no not even to the Hottentot nations,
For as time wears on, our black will wear off, and then think of our situations!
And we should not do, in lieu of black-a-moor footmen, to serve ladies of quality nimbly,
For when we’re drest in our sky-blue and silver, and large frills, all
clean and neat, and white silk stockings, if they pleased to
desire us to sweep the hearth, we couldn’t resist the chimbley.

THE CARELESSE NURSE MAYD.

SAWE a Mayd sitte on a Bank,
Beguiled by Wooer fayne and fond;
And whiles His flatterynge Vowes She drank,
Her Nurselynge slipt within a Pond!

All Even Tide they Talkde and Kist,
For She was fayre and He was Kinde;
The Sunne went down before She wist
Another Sonne had sett behinde!

With angrie Hands and frownynge Browe,
That deemed Her owne the Urchine’s Sinne,
She pluckt Him out, but he was nowe
Past being whipt for fallynge in.

She then begins to wayle the Ladde
With Shrikes that Echo answerde round—
O! foolishe Mayd to be soe sadde
The Momente that her Care was drownd!

JARVIS AND MRS. COPE.
A DECIDEDLY SERIOUS BALLAD.

N Bunhill Row, some years ago,
There lived one Mrs. Cope;
A pious woman she was call’d,
As Pius as a Pope.

Not pious in its proper sense,
But chatt’ring like a bird
Of sin and grace—in such a case
Mag-piety’s the word.

Cries she, “The Reverend Mr. Trigg
This day a text will broach,
And much I long to hear him preach,
So, Betty, call a coach.”

A bargain though she wish’d to make,
Ere they began to jog—
“Now, Coachman, what d’ye take me for?”
Says Coachman, “for a hog.”

But Jarvis, when he set her down,
A second hog did lack—
Whereas she only offered him
One shilling and “a track.”

Said he, “There ain’t no tracks in Quaife,
You and your tracks be both—”

“ACCUSTOMED TO THE CARE OF CHILDREN.”

THE BOX SEAT.

And, affidavit-like, he clench’d
Her shilling with an oath.

Said she, “I’ll have you fined for this,
And soon it shall be done,
I’ll have you up at Worship Street,
You wicked one, naught one!”

And sure enough at Worship Street
That Friday week they stood;
She said bad language he had used,
And thus she “made it good.”

“He said two shilling was his fare,
And wouldn’t take no less—
I said one shilling was enough,—
And he said C—U—S!

“And when I raised my eyes at that,
He swore again at them,
I said he was a wicked man,
And he said D—A—M.”

Now Jarvy’s turn was come to speak,
So he stroked down his hair,
“All what she says is false—cause why?
I’ll swear I never swear!

“There’s old Joe Hatch, the waterman,
Can tell you what I am;
I’m one of seven children, all
Brought up without a Dam!

“He’ll say from two year old and less
Since ever I were nust,
If ever I said C—U—S,
I wish I may be cust!

“At Sion Cottage I takes up,
And raining all the while,
To go to New Jerusalem,
A wery long two mile.

“Well, when I axes for my fare,
She rows me in the street,
And uses words as is not fit
For coachmen to repeat!

“Says she,—I know where you will go,
You sinner! I know well,—
Your worship, it’s the P—I—T
Of E and double L;”

Now here his worship stopp’d the case—
Said he—I’ll fine you both!
And of the two—why Mrs. Cope’s
I think the biggest oath?”

A LAY OF REAL LIFE.

“Some are born with a wooden spoon in their mouths, and some with a golden ladle.”—Goldsmith.

“Some are born with tin rings in their noses, and some with silver ones.”—Silversmith.

HO ruined me ere I was born,
Sold every acre, grass or corn,
And left the next heir all forlorn?
My Grandfather.

Who said my mother was no nurse,
And physicked me and made me worse,
Till infancy became a curse?
My Grandfather.

Who left me in my seventh year,
A comfort to my mother dear,
And Mr. Pope, the overseer?
My Father.

Who let me starve, to buy her gin,
Till all my bones came through my skin,
Then called me “ugly little sin?”
My Mother.

Who said my mother was a Turk,
And took me home—and made me work,
But managed half my meals to shirk?
My Aunt.

Who “of all earthly things” would boast,
“He hated other’s brats the most,”
And therefore made me feel my post?
My Uncle.

Who got in scrapes, an endless score,
And always laid them at my door,
Till many a bitter bang I bore?
My Cousin.

Who took me home when mother died,
Again with father to reside,
Black shoes, clean knives, run far and wide?
My Stepmother.

Who marred my stealthy urchin joys,
And when I played cried “What a noise!—
Girls always hector over boys—
My Sister.

Who used to share in what was mine,
Or took it all, did he incline,
‘Cause I was eight, and he was nine?
My Brother.

Who stroked my head, and said “Good lad,”
And gave me sixpence, “all he had;”
But at the stall the coin was bad?
My Godfather.

Who, gratis, shared my social glass,
But when misfortune came to pass,
Referr’d me to the pump? Alas!
My Friend.

Through all this weary world, in brief,
Who ever sympathised with grief,
Or shared my joy—my sole relief?
Myself.

THE LARK AND THE ROOK.
A FABLE.

“Lo! hear the gentle lark!”—Shakespeare.

NCE on a time—no matter where—
A lark took such a fancy to the air,
That though he often gazed beneath,
Watching the breezy down, or heath,
Yet very, very seldom he was found
To perch upon the ground.
Hour after hour,
Through ev’ry change of weather hard or soft,
Through sun and shade, and wind and show’r,
Still fluttering aloft;
In silence now, and now in song,
Up, up in cloudland all day long,
On weary wing, yet with unceasing flight,
Like to those Birds of Paradise, so rare,
Fabled to live, and love, and feed in air,
But never to alight.

It caused, of course, much speculation
Among the feather’d generation;
Who tried to guess the riddle that was in it—
The robin puzzled at it, and the wren,
The swallows, cock and hen,
The wagtail, and the linnet,
The yellowhammer, and the finch as well—
The sparrow ask’d the tit, who couldn’t tell,
The jay, the pie—but all were in the dark,
Till out of patience with the common doubt,
The Rook at last resolved to worm it out,
And thus accosted the mysterious Lark:—

“Friend, prithee, tell me why
You keep this constant hovering so high,
As if you had some castle in the air,
That you are always poising there,
A speck against the sky—
Neglectful of each old familiar feature
Of Earth that nursed you in your callow state—
You think you’re only soaring at heaven’s gate,
Whereas you’re flying in the face of Nature!”

“Friend,” said the Lark, with melancholy tone,
And in each little eye a dewdrop shone,
“No creature of my kind was ever fonder
Of that dear spot of earth
Which gave it birth—
And I was nestled in the furrow yonder!
Sweet is the twinkle of the dewy heath,
And sweet that thymy down I watch beneath,
Saluted often with a living sonnet:
But Men, vile Men, have spread so thick a scurf
Of dirt and infamy about the Turf,
I do not like to settle on it!”

MORAL.

Alas! how Nobles of another race
Appointed to the bright and lofty way
Too willingly descend to haunt a place
Polluted by the deeds of Birds of Prey!

A NOCTURNAL SKETCH.

VEN is come; and from the dark Park, hark,
The signal of the setting sun—one gun!
And six is sounding from the chime, prime time
To go and see the Drury-Lane Dane slain,—
Or hear Othello’s jealous doubt spout out,—
Or Macbeth raving at that shade-made blade,
Denying to his frantic clutch much touch;—
Or else to see Ducrow with wide stride ride
Four horses as no other man can span;
Or in the small Olympic Pit, sit split
Laughing at Liston, while you quiz his phiz.

Anon Night comes, and with her wings brings things,
Such as, with his poetic tongue, Young sung;
The gas up-blazes with its bright white light,
And paralytic watchmen prowl, howl, growl,
About the streets and take up Pall-Mall Sal,
Who, hasting to her nightly jobs, robs fobs.

Now thieves to enter for your cash, smash, crash,
Past drowsy Charley, in a deep sleep, creep,
But frighten’d by Policeman B 3, flee,
And while they’re going, whisper low, “No go!”

Now puss, while folks are in their beds, treads leads,
And sleepers waking, grumble—“Drat that cat!”
Who in the gutter caterwauls, squalls, mauls
Some feline foe, and screams in shrill ill-will.

Now Bulls of Bashan, of a prize size, rise
In childish dreams, and with a roar gore poor
Georgy, or Charley, or Billy, willy-nilly;—
But Nursemaid in a nightmare rest, chest-press’d,
Dreameth of one of her old flames, James Games,

And that she hears—what faith is man’s—Ann’s banns
And his, from Reverend Mr. Rice, twice, thrice:
White ribbons flourish, and a stout shout out,
That upward goes, shows Rose knows those bows’ woes!

DOMESTIC ASIDES; OR, TRUTH IN PARENTHESES.

“I really take it very kind
This visit, Mrs. Skinner!
I have not seen you such an age—
(The wretch has come to dinner!)

“Your daughters, too, what loves of girls—
What heads for painters’ easels!
Come here and kiss the infant, dears,—
(And give it p’rhaps the measles!)

“Your charming boys I see are home
From Reverend Mr. Russel’s;
’Twas very kind to bring them both,—
(What boots for my new Brussels!)

“What! little Clara left at home?
Well, now, I call that shabby:
I should have loved to kiss her so,—
(A flabby, dabby babby!)

“And Mr. S., I hope he’s well;
Ah! though he lives so handy,
He never now drops in to sup,—
(The better for our brandy!)

“Come, take a seat—I long to hear
About Matilda’s marriage;
You’re come of course to spend the day!—
(Thank Heav’n, I hear the carriage!)

“What, must you go? next time I hope
You’ll give me longer measure;
Nay—I shall see you down the stairs—
(With most uncommon pleasure!)

“Good-bye! good-bye! remember all,
Next time you’ll take your dinners!
(Now, David, mind I’m not at home
In future to the Skinners!”)

JOHN DAY.
A PATHETIC BALLAD.

“A Day after the Fair.”—Old Proverb.

OHN DAY he was the biggest man
Of all the coachman-kind,
With back too broad to be conceived
By any narrow mind.

The very horses knew his weight
When he was in the rear,
And wished his box a Christmas-box
To come but once a year.

Alas! against the shafts of love
What armour can prevail?
Soon Cupid sent an arrow through
His scarlet coat of mail.

The barmaid of the Crown he loved,
From whom he never ranged,
For tho’ he changed his horses there,
His love he never changed.

He thought her fairest of all fares,
So fondly love prefers;
And often, among twelve outsides,
Deemed no outside like hers.

One day as she was sitting down
Beside the porter-pump—
He came, and knelt with all his fat,
And made an offer plump.

Said she, my taste will never learn
To like so huge a man,
So I must beg you will come here
As little as you can.

But still he stoutly urged his suit,
With vows, and sighs, and tears,
Yet could not pierce her heart, altho’
He drove the Dart for years.

In vain he wooed, in vain he sued;
The maid was cold and proud,
And sent him off to Coventry,
While on his way to Stroud.

He fretted all the way to Stroud,
And thence all back to town;
The course of love was never smooth,
So his went up and down.

At last her coldness made him pine
To merely bones and skin;
But still he loved like one resolved
To love through thick and thin.

Oh, Mary, view my wasted back,
And see my dwindled calf;
Tho’ I have never had a wife,
I’ve lost my better half.

Alas, in vain he still assail’d
Her heart withstood the dint;
Though he had carried sixteen stone
He could not move a flint.

Worn out, at last he made a vow
To break his being’s link;
For he was so reduced in size
At nothing he could shrink.

Now some will talk in water’s praise
And waste a deal of breath,
But John, tho’ he drank nothing else—
He drank himself to death.

The cruel maid that caused his love,
Found out the fatal close,
For, looking in the butt, she saw
The butt-end of his woes.

Some say his spirit haunts the Crown,
But that is only talk—
For after riding all his life,
His ghost objects to walk.

NUMBER ONE.
VERSIFIED FROM THE PROSE OF A YOUNG LADY.

T’S very hard!—and so it is,
To live in such a row,
And witness this that every Miss
But me, has got a Beau.
For Love goes calling up and down,
But here he seems to shun;
I’m sure he has been asked enough
To call at Number One!

I’m sick of all the double knocks
That come to Number Four!
At Number Three, I often see
A Lover at the door:
And one in blue, at Number Two,
Calls daily like a dun,—
It’s very hard they come so near,
And not to Number One!

Miss Bell I hear has got a dear
Exactly to her mind,
By sitting at the window pane
Without a bit of blind;
But I go in the balcony,
Which she has never done,
Yet arts that thrive at Number Five
Don’t take at Number One!

’Tis hard with plenty in the street,
And plenty passing by,—
There’s nice young men at Number Ten,
But only rather shy;
And Mrs. Smith across the way
Has got a grown-up son,
But la! he hardly seems to know
There is a Number One!

There’s Mr. Wick at Number Nine,
But he’s intent on pelf,
And though he’s pious, will not love
His neighbour as himself.
At Number Seven there was a sale—
The goods had quite a run!
And here I’ve got my single lot
On hand at Number One!

My mother often sits at work
And talks of props and stays,
And what a comfort I shall be
In her declining days.
The very maids about the house
Have set me down a nun;
The sweethearts all belong to them
That call at Number One!

Once only when the flue took fire,
One Friday afternoon,
Young Mr. Long came kindly in
And told me not to swoon:
Why can’t he come again without
The Phœnix and the Sun!
We cannot always have a flue
On fire at Number One!

I am not old! I am not plain!
Nor awkward in my gait—
I am not crooked, like the bride
That went from Number Eight:
I’m sure white satin made her look
As brown as any bun—
But even beauty has no chance,
I think, at Number One!

At Number Six they say Miss Rose
Has slain a score of hearts,
And Cupid, for her sake, has been
Quite prodigal of darts.
The Imp they show with bended bow,
I wish he had a gun!
But if he had, he’d never deign
To shoot with Number One.

It’s very hard, and so it is,
To live in such a row!
And here’s a ballad singer come
To aggravate my woe.
Oh take away your foolish song
And tones enough to stun—
There is “Nae luck about the house,”
I know, at Number One!

THE DROWNING DUCKS.

MONGST the sights that Mrs. Bond
Enjoyed, yet grieved at more than others—
Were little ducklings in the pond,
Swimming about beside their mothers—
Small things like living water lilies,
But yellow as the daffo-dillies.

“It’s very hard,” she used to moan,
“That other people have their ducklings
To grace their waters—mine alone
Have never any pretty chucklings.”
For why!—each little yellow navy
Went down—all downy—to old Davy!

She had a lake—a pond I mean—
It’s wave was rather thick than pearly—
She had two ducks, their napes were green—
She had a drake, his tail was curly,—
Yet spite of drake, and ducks, and pond,
No little ducks had Mrs. Bond!

The birds were both the best of mothers—
The nests had eggs—the eggs had luck—
The infant D.’s came forth like others—
But there, alas! the matter stuck!
They might as well have all died addle,
As die when they began to paddle!

For when, as native instinct taught her,
The mother set her brood afloat,
They sank ere long right under water,
Like any overloaded boat;
They were web-footed too to see,
As ducks and spiders ought to be!

No peccant humour in a gander
Brought havoc on her little folks,—
No poaching cook—a frying pander
To appetite,—destroyed their yolks,—
Beneath her very eyes, Od’ rot ’em!
They went like plummets to the bottom.

The thing was strange—a contradiction
It seemed of nature and her works!
For little ducks, beyond conviction,
Should float without the help of corks:
Great Johnson it bewildered him!
To hear of chicks that could not swim.

Poor Mrs. Bond! what could she do
But change the breed—and she tried divers,
Which dived as all seemed born to do;
No little ones were e’er survivors—
Like those that copy gems, I’m thinking,
They all were given to die-sinking!

In vain their downy coats were shorn:
They floundered still;—Batch after batch went!
The little fools seemed only born
And hatched for nothing but a hatchment!
Whene’er they launched—oh sight of wonder!
Like fires the water “got them under!”

No woman ever gave their lucks
A better chance than Mrs. Bond did;
At last quite out of heart and ducks,
She gave her pond up and desponded;
For Death among the water lilies,
Cried “Duc ad me,” to all her dillies.

But though resolved to breed no more,
She brooded often on this riddle—
Alas! twas darker than before!
At last, about the summer’s middle,
What Johnson, Mrs. Bond, or none did,
To clear the matter up the sun did!

The thirsty Sirius, dog-like, drank
So deep his furious tongue to cool,
The shallow waters sank and sank,
And lo, from out the wasted pool,
Too hot to hold them any longer,
There crawled some eels as big as conger!

I wish all folks would look a bit,
In such a case below the surface;
But when the eels were caught and split
By Mrs. Bond, just think of her face,
In each inside at once to spy
A duckling turned to giblet pie!

The sight at once explained the case,
Making the Dame look rather silly,
The tenants of that Eely Place
Had found the way to Pick a dilly,
And so by under-water suction,
Had wrought the little ducks abduction.

DIBDIN MODERNIZED.

I steamed from the Downs in the Nancy,
My jib how she smoked through the breeze.
She’s a vessel as tight to my fancy
As ever boil’d through the salt seas.
* * * * * *
When up the flue the sailor goes
And ventures on the pot,
The landsman, he no better knows,
But thinks hard is his lot.

Bold Jack with smiles each danger meets,
Weighs anchor, lights the log;
Trims up the fire, picks out the slates,
And drinks his can of grog.
* * * * * *
Go patter to lubbers and swabs, do you see,
‘Bout danger, and fear, and the like;
But a Boulton and Watt and good Wall’s end give me;
And it an’t too a little I’ll strike.

Though the tempest our chimney smack smooth shall down smite,
And shiver each bundle of wood;
Clear the wreck, stir the fire, and stow everything tight,
And boiling a gallop we’ll scud.

THE STORM
RE-WRITTEN.

ARK, the boatswain hoarsely bawling,
By shovel, tongues, and poker stand;
Down the scuttle quick be hauling,
Down your bellows, hand, boys, hand;
Now it freshens,—blow like blazes;
Now unto the coal-hole go;
Stir, boys, stir, don’t mind black faces,
Up your ashes nimbly throw.

Ply your bellows, raise the wind, boys,
See the valve is clear of course;
Let the paddles spin, don’t mind, boys,
Though the weather should be worse.
Fore and aft a proper draft get,
Oil the engines, see all clear;
Hands up, each a sack of coal get,
Man the boiler, cheer, lads, cheer.

Now the dreadful thunder’s roaring,
Peal on peal contending clash;
On our heads fierce rain falls pouring,
In our eyes the paddles splash.
One wide water all around us,
All above one smoke-black sky:
Different deaths at once surround us;
Hark! what means that dreadful cry?

The funnel’s gone! cries ev’ry tongue out,
The engineer’s washed off the deck;
A leak beneath the coal-hole’s sprung out
Call all hands to clear the wreck.
Quick, some coal, some nubbly pieces;
Come, my hearts, be stout and bold;
Plumb the boiler, speed decreases,
Four feet water getting cold.

While o’er the ship wild waves are beating,
We for wives or children mourn;
Alas! from hence there’s no retreating;
Alas! to them there’s no return.
The fire is out—we’ve burst the bellows,
The tinder-box is swamped below;
Heaven have mercy on poor fellows,
For only that can serve us now!

I’M NOT A SINGLE MAN.

“Double, single, and the rub.”—Hoyle.
“This, this is Solitude.”—Byron.

I.

ELL, I confess, I did not guess
A simple marriage vow
Would make me find all womenkind
Such unkind women now!
They need not, sure, as distant be
As Javo or Japan,—
Yet every Miss reminds me this—
I’m not a single man!

II.

Once they made choice of my bass voice
To share in each duett;

SEA CONSUMPTION—WAISTING AWAY.

A STRANGE BIRD.

So well I danced, I somehow chanced
To stand in every set:
They now declare I cannot sing,
And dance on Bruin’s plan;
Me draw!—me paint!—me anything!—
I’m not a single man!

III.

Once I was asked advice, and task’d
What works to buy or not,
And “would I read that passage out
I so admired in Scott?”
They then could bear to hear one read;
But if I now began,
How they would snub “My pretty page,”
I’m not a single man!

IV.

One used to stitch a collar then,
Another hemmed a frill;
I had more purses netted then
Than I could hope to fill.
I once could get a button on,
But now I never can—
My buttons then were Bachelor’s—
I’m not a single man!

V.

Oh how they hated politics
Thrust on me by papa:
But now my chat—they all leave that
To entertain mamma.
Mamma, who praises her own self,
Instead of Jane or Ann,
And lays “her girls” upon the shelf—
I’m not a single man!

VI.

Ah me, how strange it is the change,
In parlour and in hall!
They treat me so, if I but go
To make a morning call.
If they had hair in papers once,
Bolt up the stairs they ran;
They now sit still in dishabille—
I’m not a single man!

VII.

Miss Mary Bond was once so fond
Of Romans and of Greeks;
She daily sought my cabinet,
To study my antiques.
Well, now she doesn’t care a dump
For ancient pot or pan,
Her taste at once is modernised—
I’m not a single man!

VIII.

My spouse is fond of homely life,
And all that sort of thing;
I go to balls without my wife,
And never wear a ring:
And yet each Miss to whom I come,
As strange as Genghis Khan,
Knows by some sign, I can’t divine,—
I’m not a single man!

IX.

Go where I will, I but intrude;
I’m left in crowded rooms,
Like Zimmerman on Solitude,
Or Hervey at his tombs.
From head to heel, they make me feel
Of quite another clan;
Compelled to own, though left alone,
I’m not a single man!

X.

Miss Towne the toast, though she can boast
A nose of Roman line,
Will turn up even that in scorn
Of compliments of mine:
She should have seen that I have been
Her sex’s partisan,
And really married all I could—
I’m not a single man!

XI.

’Tis hard to see how others fare,
Whilst I rejected stand,—
Will no one take my arm because
They cannot have my hand?
Miss Parry, that for some would go
A trip to Hindostan,
With me don’t care to mount a stair—
I’m not a single man!

XII.

Some change, of course, should be in force
But, surely, not so much—
There may be hands I may not squeeze
But must I never touch?—
Must I forbear to hand a chair
And not pick up a fan?
But I have been myself picked up—
I’m not a single man!

XIII.

Others may hint a lady’s tint
Is purest red and white—
May say her eyes are like the skies,
So very blue and bright,—
I must not say that she has eyes;
Or if I so began,
I have my fears about my ears,—
I’m not a single man!

XIV.

I must confess I did not guess
A simple marriage vow,
Would make me find all women-kind
Such unkind women now;—
I might be hash’d to death, or smash’d
By Mr. Pickford’s van,
Without, I fear, a single tear.
I’m not a single man!

THE GHOST.
A VERY SERIOUS BALLAD.

“I’ll be your second.”—Liston.

N Middle Row, some years ago,
There lived one Mr. Brown;
And many folks considered him
The stoutest man in town.

But Brown and stout will both wear out,
One Friday he died hard,
And left a widow’d wife to mourn
At twenty pence a yard.

Now widow B. in two short months
Thought mourning quite a tax;
And wished, like Mr. Wilberforce,
To manumit her blacks.

With Mr. Street she soon was sweet;
The thing thus came about:
She asked him in at home, and then
At church he asked her out!

Assurance such as this the man
In ashes could not stand;
So like a Phœnix he rose up
Against the Hand in Hand.

One dreary night the angry sprite
Appeared before her view;
It came a little after one,
But she was after two
“Oh Mrs. B., oh Mrs. B.!
Are these your sorrow’s deeds,
Already getting up a flame,
To burn your widow’s weeds?

“It’s not so long since I have left
For aye the mortal scene;
My memory—like Rogers’s,
Should still be bound in green!

“Yet if my face you still retrace
I almost have a doubt—
I’m like an old Forget-Me-Not,
With all the leaves torn out!

“To think that on that finger-joint,
Another pledge should cling;
Oh Bess! upon my very soul,
It struck like ‘Knock and Ring.’

“A ton of marble on my breast
Can’t hinder my return;
Your conduct, Ma’am, has set my blood
A-boiling in my urn!

“Remember, oh! remember how
The marriage rite did run,—
If ever we one flesh should be,
’Tis now—when I have none!

“And you, Sir—once a bosom friend—
Of perjured faith convict,
As ghostly toe can give no blow,
Consider you are kick’d.

“A hollow voice is all I have,
But this I tell you plain,
Marry come up!—you marry, Ma’am,
And I’ll come up again.”

More he had said, but chanticleer
The spritely shade did shock
With sudden crow, and off he went,
Like fowling-piece at cock!

THE DOUBLE KNOCK.

AT-TAT it went upon the lion’s chin,
“That hat, I know it!” cried the joyful girl:
“Summer’s it is, I know him by his knock,
Comers like him are welcome as the day!
Lizzy! go down and open the street-door,
Busy I am to any one but him.
Know him you must—he has been often here;
Show him up stairs, and tell him I’m alone.”

Quickly the maid went tripping down the stair;
Thickly the heart of Rose Matilda beat;
“Sure he has brought me tickets for the play—
Drury—or Covent Garden—darling man!—
Kemble will play—or Kean who makes the soul
Tremble; in Richard or the frenzied Moor—
Farren, the stay and prop of many a farce
Barren beside—or Liston, Laughter’s Child—
Kelly the natural, to witness whom
Jelly is nothing to the public’s jam—
Cooper, the sensible—and Walter Knowles
Super, in William Tell—now rightly told.
Better—perchance, from Andrews, brings a box,
Letter of boxes for the Italian stage—
Brocard! Donzelli! Taglioni! Paul!
No card,—thank Heaven—engages me to-night!
Feathers, of course, no turban, and no toque—
Weather’s against it, but I’ll go in curls.
Dearly I dote on white—my satin dress,
Merely one night—it won’t be much the worse—
Cupid—the New Ballet I long to see—
Stupid! why don’t she go and ope the door?”
Glisten’d her eye as the impatient girl
Listen’d, low bending o’er the topmost stair.
Vainly, alas! she listens and she bends,
Plainly she hears this question and reply:
“Axes your pardon, Sir, but what d’ye want?”
“Taxes,” says he, “and shall not call again!”

OUR VILLAGE.—BY A VILLAGER.

UR village, that’s to say not Miss Mitford’s village, but our village of Bullock Smithy,
Is come into by an avenue of trees, three oak pollards, two elders, and a withy;
And in the middle, there’s a green of about not exceeding an acre and a half;
It’s common to all, and fed off by nineteen cows, six ponies, three horses, five asses, two foals, seven pigs, and a calf!
Besides a pond in the middle, as is held by a similar sort of common law lease,
And contains twenty ducks, six drakes, three ganders, two dead dogs, four drown’d kittens, and twelve geese.
Of course the green’s cropt very close, and does famous for bowling when the little village boys play at cricket;
Only some horse, or pig, or cow, or great jackass is sure to come and stand right before the wicket.
There’s fifty-five private houses, let alone barns and workshops, and pig-sties, and poultry huts, and such-like sheds;
With plenty of public-houses—two Foxes, one Green Man, three Bunch of Grapes, one Crown, and six King’s Heads.
The Green Man is reckon’d the best, as the only one that for love or money can raise
A postilion, a blue jacket, two deplorable lame white horses, and a ramshackled “neat post-chaise.”
There’s one parish church for all the people, whatsoever may be their ranks in life or their degrees,
Except one very damp, small, dark, freezing-cold, little Methodist chapel of Ease;
And close by the church-yard, there’s a stone-mason’s yard, that when the time is seasonable
Will furnish with afflictions sore and marble urns and cherubims very low and reasonable.
There’s a cage, comfortable enough; I’ve been in it with Old Jack Jeffrey and Tom Pike;
For the Green Man next door will send you in ale, gin, or any thing else you like.
I can’t speak of the stocks, as nothing remains of them but the upright post;
But the pound is kept in repairs for the sake of Cob’s horse, as is always there almost.
There’s a smithy of course, where that queer sort of a chap in his way, Old Joe Bradley,
Perpetually hammers and stammers, for he stutters and shoes horses very badly.
There’s a shop of all sorts, that sells every thing, kept by the widow of Mr. Task;
But when you go there it’s ten to one she’s out of every thing you ask.
You’ll know her house by the swarm of boys, like flies, about the old sugary cask.
There are six empty houses, and not so well paper’d inside as out,
For bill-stickers won’t beware, but sticks notices of sales and election placards all about.
That’s the Doctor’s with a green door, where the garden pots in the windows is seen;
A weakly monthly rose that don’t blow, and a dead geranium, and a tea-plant with five black leaves and one green.
As for hollyoaks at the cottage doors, and honeysuckles and jasmines, you may go and whistle;
But the Tailor’s front garden grow two cabbages, a dock, a ha’porth of pennyroyal, two dandelions, and a thistle.
There are three small orchards—Mr. Busby’s the schoolmaster’s is the chief—
With two pear-trees that don’t bear; one plum and an apple, that every year is stripp’d by a thief.
There’s another small day-school too, kept by the respectable Mrs. Gaby;
A select establishment, for six little boys and one big, and four little girls and a baby.
There’s a rectory, with pointed gables and strange old chimneys that never smokes,
For the rector don’t live on his living like other Christian sort of folks;
There’s a barber’s once a week well filled with rough black-bearded shock-headed churls,
And a window with two feminine men’s heads, and two masculine ladies in false curls;
There’s a butcher’s and a carpenter’s and a plumber’s and a small green-grocer’s, and a baker
But he won’t bake on a Sunday, and there’s a sexton that’s a coal-merchant besides, and an undertaker;
And a toy-shop, but not a whole one, for a village can’t compare with the London shops;
One window sells drums, dolls, kites, carts, bats, Clout’s balls, and the other sells malt and hops.
And Mrs. Brown, in domestic economy not to be a bit behind her betters,
Lets her house to a milliner, a watchmaker, a rat-catcher, a cobbler, lives in it herself, and it’s the post-office for letters.
Now I’ve gone through all the village—ay, from end to end, save and except one more house,
But I haven’t come to that—and I hope I never shall—and that’s the Village Poor-House!

PAIR’D NOT MATCH’D.

F wedded bliss
Bards sing amiss,
I cannot make a song of it;
For I am small,
My wife is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it.

When we debate
It is my fate
To always have the wrong of it;
For I am small,
And she is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it!

And when I speak
My voice is weak,
But hers—she makes a gong of it!
For I am small,
And she is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it!

She has, in brief,
Command in Chief,
And I’m but Aide-de-camp of it;
For I am small,
And she is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it!

She gives to me
The weakest tea,
And takes the whole Souchong of it;
For I am small,
And she is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it!

She’ll sometimes grip
My buggy whip,
And make me feel the thong of it;
For I am small
And she is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it!

Against my life
She’ll take a knife,
Or fork, and dart the prong of it;
For I am small,
And she is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it!

I sometimes think
I’ll take to drink,
And hector when I’m strong of it;
For I am small,
And she is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it!

O, if the bell
Would ring her knell,
I’d make a gay ding-dong of it;
For I am small,
And she is tall,
And that’s the short and long of it!

The Buoy at the Nore.

Son and Hair.

THE BOY AT THE NORE.

“Alone I did it!—Boy!”—Coriolanus.

SAY, little Boy at the Nore,
Do you come from the small Isle of Man?
Why, your history a mystery must be,—
Come tell us as much as you can,
Little Boy at the Nore!

You live it seems wholly on water,
Which your Gambier calls living in clover;—
But how comes it, if that is the case,
You’re eternally half seas over,—
Little Boy at the Nore?

While you ride—while you dance—while you float—
Never mind your imperfect orthography;—
But give us as well as you can,
Your watery auto-biography,
Little Boy at the Nore!

LITTLE BOY AT THE NORE LOQUITOR.

I’m the tight little Boy at the Nore,
In a sort of sea negus I dwells;
Half and half ’twixt saltwater and Port,
I’m reckon’d the first of the swells—
I’m the Boy at the Nore!

I lives with my toes to the flounders,
And watches through long days and nights;
Yet, cruelly eager, men look—
To catch the first glimpse of my lights—
I’m the Boy at the Nore.

I never gets cold in the head,
So my life on salt water is sweet,—
I think I owes much of my health
To being well used to wet feet—
As the Boy at the Nore.

There’s one thing, I’m never in debt:
Nay!—I liquidates more than I oughtor;[3]
So the man to beat Cits as goes by,
In keeping the head above water,
Is the Boy at the Nore.

I’ve seen a good deal of distress,
Lots of Breakers in Ocean’s Gazette;
They should do as I do—rise o’er all;
Aye, a good floating capital get,
Like the Boy at the Nore!

I’m a’ter the sailor’s own heart,
And cheers him, in deep water rolling;
And the friend of all friends to Jack Junk,
Ben Backstay, Tom Pipes, and Tom Bowling,
Is the Boy at the Nore!

Could I e’er but grow up, I’d be off
For a week to make love with my wheedles;
If the tight little boy at the Nore
Could but catch a nice girl at the Needles,
We’d have two at the Nore!

They thinks little of sizes on water,
On big waves the tiny one skulks,—
While the river has Men of War on it—
Yes—the Thames is oppressed with Great Hulks,
And the Boy’s at the Nore!

But I’ve done—for the water is heaving
Round my body, as though it would sink it!
And I’ve been so long pitching and tossing,
That sea-sick—you’d hardly now think it—
Is the Boy at the Nore!

THE SUPPER SUPERSTITION.
A PATHETIC BALLAD.

“Oh flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!”—Mercutio.

I.

’Twas twelve o’clock by Chelsea chimes,
When all in hungry trim,
Good Mister Jupp sat down to sup
With wife, and Kate, and Jim.

II.

Said he, “Upon this dainty cod
How bravely I shall sup,”—
When whiter than the table-cloth,
A GHOST came rising up!

III.

“O, father dear, O, mother dear,
Dear Kate, and brother Jim,—
You know when some one went to sea,—
Don’t cry—but I am him!

IV.

“You hope some day with fond embrace
To greet your absent Jack,
But oh, I am come here to say
I’m never coming back!

V.

“From Alexandria we set sail,
With corn, and oil, and figs,
But steering ‘too much Sow,’ we struck
Upon the Sow and Pigs!

VI.

“The ship we pump’d till we could see
Old England from the tops;
When down she went with all our hands,
Right in the Channel’s Chops.

VII.

“Just give a look in Norey’s chart,
The very place it tells;
I think it says twelve fathom deep,
Clay bottom, mixed with shells.

VIII.

“Well, there we are till ‘hands aloft,’
We have at last a call;
The pug I had for brother Jim,
Kate’s parrot too, and all.

IX.

“But oh, my spirit cannot rest,
In Davy Jones’s sod,
Till I’ve appear’d to you and said,—
Don’t sup on that ‘ere Cod!

X.

“You live on land, and little think
What passes in the sea;
Last Sunday week, at 2 P.M.
That Cod was picking me!

XI.

“Those oysters too, that look so plump,
And seem so nicely done,
They put my corpse in many shells,
Instead of only one.

XII.

“O, do not eat those oysters then,
And do not touch the shrimps;
When I was in my briny grave,
They suck’d my blood like imps!

XIII.

“Don’t eat what brutes would never eat,
The brutes I used to pat,
They’ll know the smell they used to smell;
Just try the dog and cat!”

XIV.

The Spirit fled—they wept his fate,
And cried, Alack, alack!
At last up started brother Jim,
“Let’s try if Jack was Jack!”

XV.

They call’d the Dog, they call’d the Cat,
And little Kitten too,
And down they put the Cod and sauce,
To see what brutes would do.

XVI.

Old Tray lick’d all the oysters up,
Puss never stood at crimps,
But munch’d the Cod—and little Kit
Quite feasted on the shrimps!

XVII.

The thing was odd, and minus Cod
And sauce, they stood like posts;
O, prudent folks, for fear of hoax,
Put no belief in Ghosts!

THE BROKEN DISH.

HAT’S life but full of care and doubt,
With all its fine humanities,
With parasols we walk about,
Long pigtails and such vanities.

We plant pomegranate trees and things
And go in gardens sporting,
With toys and fans of peacocks’ wings,
To painted ladies courting.

We gather flowers of every hue,
And fish in boats for fishes,
Build summer-houses painted blue,—
But life’s as frail as dishes.

Walking about their groves of trees,
Blue bridges and blue rivers,
How little thought them two Chinese
They’d both be smash’d to shivers.

LITERARY AND LITERAL.

HE March of Mind upon its mighty stilts,
(A spirit by no means to fasten mocks on,)
In travelling through Berks, Beds, Notts, and Wilts,
Hants—Bucks, Herts, Oxon,

Got up a thing our ancestors ne’er thought on,
A thing that, only in our proper youth,
We should have chuckled at—in sober truth,
A Conversazione at Hog’s Norton!

A place whose native dialect, somehow,
Has always by an adage been affronted,
And that it is all gutturals, is now
Taken for grunted.

Conceive the snoring of a greedy swine,
The slobbering of a hungry Ursine Sloth—
If you have ever heard such creature dine—
And—for Hog’s Norton, make a mix of both!—

O shades of Shakspeare! Chaucer! Spenser!
Milton! Pope! Gray! Warton!
O Colman! Kenny! Planche! Poole! Peake!
Pocock! Reynolds! Morton!
O Grey! Peel! Sadler! Wilberforce! Burdett!
Hume! Wilmot Horton!
Think of your prose and verse, and worse—delivered in
Hog’s Norton!—

The founder of Hog’s Norton Athenæum
Framed her society
With some variety
From Mr. Roscoe’s Liverpool museum;
Not a mere pic-nic, for the mind’s repast,
But tempting to the solid knife-and-forker,
It held its sessions in the house that last
Had killed a porker.
It chanced one Friday,
One Farmer Grayley stuck a very big hog,
A perfect Gog or Magog of a pig-hog,
Which made of course a literary high day,—
Not that our Farmer was a man to go
With literary taste—so far from suiting ’em,
When he heard mention of Professor Crowe,
Or Lalla-Rookh, he always was for shooting ’em!
In fact in letters he was quite a log,
With him great Bacon
Was literally taken.
And Hogg—the Poet—nothing but a Hog!
As to all others on the list of Fame,
Although they were discuss’d and mention’d daily,
He only recognised one classic name,
And thought that she had hung herself—Miss Baillie!

To balance this, our Farmer’s only daughter
Had a great taste for the Castalian water—
A Wordsworth worshipper—a Southey wooer,—
(Though men that deal in water-colour cakes
May disbelieve the fact—yet nothing’s truer)
She got the bluer
The more she dipped and dabbled in the Lakes.
The secret truth is, Hope, the old deceiver,
At future Authorship was apt to hint,
Producing what some call the Type-us Fever,
Which means a burning to be seen in print.

Of learning’s laurels—Miss Joanna Baillie—
Of Mrs. Hemans—Mrs. Wilson—daily
Dreamt Anne Priscilla Isabella Grayley;
And Fancy hinting that she had the better
Of L.E.L. by one initial letter,
She thought the world would quite enraptur’d see

“Love Lays and Lyrics
BY
A P I G.”

Accordingly, with very great propriety,
She joined the H. N. B. and double S.,
That is,—Hog’s Norton Blue Stocking Society;
And saving when her Pa his pigs prohibited,
Contributed
Her pork and poetry towards the mess.
This feast, we said, one Friday was the case,
When farmer Grayley—from Macbeth to quote—
Screwing his courage to the “sticking place,”
Stuck a large knife into a grunter’s throat;—
A kind of murder that the law’s rebuke
Seldom condemns by shake of its peruke,
Showing the little sympathy of big-wigs
With pig-wigs!

The swine—poor wretch!—with nobody to speak for it,
And beg its life, resolved to have a squeak for it;
So—like the fabled swan—died singing out,
And, thus, there issued from the farmer’s yard
A note that notified without a card,
An invitation to the evening rout.

And when the time came duly,—“At the close of
The day,” as Beattie has it, “when the ham—”
Bacon and pork were ready to dispose of,
And pettitoes and chit’lings too, to cram,—
Walked in the H. N. B. and double S.’s,
All in appropriate and swinish dresses,
For lo! it is a fact, and not a joke,
Although the Muse might fairly jest upon it,
They came—each “Pig-faced Lady,” in that bonnet
We call a poke.

The Members all assembled thus, a rare woman
At pork and poetry was chosen chairwoman;—
In fact, the bluest of the Blues, Miss Ikey,
Whose whole pronunciation was so piggy,
She always named the authoress of “Psyche”—
As Mrs. Tiggey!

And now arose a question of some moment,—
What author for a lecture was the richer,
Bacon or Hogg? there were no votes for Beaumont,
But some for Flitcher;
While others, with a more sagacious reasoning,
Proposed another work,
And thought their pork
Would prove more relishing from Thomson’s Season-ing!

But practised in Shakspearian readings daily,—
O! Miss Macaulay! Shakspeare at Hog’s Norton!—
Miss Anne Priscilla Isabella Grayley
Selected him that evening to snort on.
In short, to make our story not a big tale,
Just fancy her exerting
Her talents, and converting
The Winter’s Tale to something like a pig-tale!
Her sister auditory
All sitting round, with grave and learned faces,
Were very plauditory,
Of course, and clapped her at the proper places.

Till fanned at once by fortune and the Muse,
She thought herself the blessedest of Blues.
But Happiness, alas! has blights of ill,
And Pleasure’s bubbles in the air explode;—
There is no travelling through life but still
The heart will meet with breakers on the road!

With that peculiar voice
Heard only from Hog’s Norton throats and noses,
Miss G., with Perdita, was making choice
Of buds and blossoms for her summer posies,
When coming to that line, where Proserpine
Lets fall her flowers from the wain of Dis;
Imagine this—
Uprose on his hind legs old Farmer Grayley,
Grunting this question for the club’s digestion,
“Do Dis’s Waggon go from the Ould Bäaley?”

THE SUB-MARINE.

T was a brave and jolly wight,
His cheek was baked and brown,
For he had been in many climes
With captains of renown,
And fought with those who fought so well
At Nile and Camperdown.

His coat it was a soldier coat,
Of red with yellow faced,
But (merman-like) he look’d marine
All downward from the waist;
His trowsers were so wide and blue,
And quite in sailor taste!

He put the rummer to his lips,
And drank a jolly draught;
He raised the rummer many times—
And ever as he quaff’d,
The more he drank the more the ship
Seem’d pitching fore and aft!

The ship seem’d pitching fore and aft,
As in a heavy squall;
It gave a lurch and down he went,
Head-foremost in his fall!
Three times he did not rise, alas!
He never rose at all!

But down he went, right down at once
Like any stone he dived,
He could not see, or hear, or feel—
Of senses all deprived!
At last he gave a look around
To see where he arrived!

And all that he could see was green,
Sea-green on every hand!
And then he tried to sound beneath,
And all he felt was sand!
There he was fain to lie, for he
Could neither sit nor stand!

And lo! above his head there bent
A strange and staring lass;
One hand was in her yellow hair,
The other held a glass;
A mermaid she must surely be
If ever mermaid was!

Her fish-like mouth was open’d wide,
Her eyes were blue and pale,
Her dress was of the ocean green,
When ruffled by a gale;
Thought he “beneath that petticoat
She hides a salmon-tail!”

She look’d as siren ought to look,
A sharp and bitter shrew,
To sing deceiving lullabies
For mariners to rue,—
But when he saw her lips apart,
It chill’d him through and through!

With either hand he stopp’d his ears
Against her evil cry;
Alas, alas, for all his care,
His doom it seem’d to die,
Her voice went ringing through his head
It was so sharp and high!

He thrust his fingers farther in
At each unwilling ear,
But still in very spite of all,
The words were plain and clear;
“I can’t stand here the whole day long,
To hold your glass of beer!”

With open’d mouth and open’d eyes,
Up rose the Sub-marine,
And gave a stare to find the sands
And deeps where he had been:
There was no siren with her glass
No waters ocean-green!

The wet deception from his eyes
Kept fading more and more,
He only saw the bar-maid stand
With pouting lip before—
The small green parlour of the Ship,
And little sanded floor.

THE LAMENT OF TOBY,
THE LEARNED PIG.

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.”—Pope.

HEAVY day! O day of woe!
To misery a poster,
Why was I ever farrow’d—why
Not spitted for a roaster?

In this world, pigs, as well as men,
Must dance to fortune’s fiddlings,
But must I give the classics up,
For barley-meal and middlings?

Of what avail that I could spell
And read, just like my betters,
If I must come to this at last,
To litters, not to letters?

O, why are pigs made scholars of?
It baffles my discerning,
What griskens, fry, and chitterlings
Can have to do with learning.

Alas! my learning once drew cash,
But public fame’s unstable,
So I must turn a pig again,
And fatten for the table.

To leave my literary line
My eyes get red and leaky;
But Giblett doesn’t want me blue,
But red and white, and streaky.

Old Mullins used to cultivate
My learning like a gard’ner;
But Giblett only thinks of lard,
And not of Doctor Lardner!

He does not care about my brain
The value of two coppers,
All that he thinks about my head
Is, how I’m off for choppers.

Of all my literary kin
A farewell must be taken,
Good-bye to the poetic Hogg!
The philosophic Bacon!

Day after day my lessons fade,
My intellect gets muddy;
A trough I have, and not a desk,
A sty—and not a study!

Another little month, and then
My progress ends like Bunyan’s;
The seven sages that I loved
Will be chopp’d up with onions!

Then over head and ears in brine
They’ll souse me, like a salmon,
My mathematics turn to brawn,
My logic into gammon.

My Hebrew will all retrograde,
Now I’m put up to fatten;
My Greek, it will all go to grease;
The Dogs will have my Latin!

Farewell to Oxford!—and to Bliss!
To Milman, Crowe, and Glossop,—
I now must be content with chats,
Instead of learned gossip!

Farewell to “Town!” farewell to “Gown!”
I’ve quite outgrown the latter,—
Instead of Trencher-cap my head
Will soon be in a platter!

O why did I at Brazen-Nose
Rout up the roots of knowledge?
A butcher that can’t read will kill
A pig that’s been to college!

For sorrow I could stick myself,
But conscience is a clasher;
A thing that would be rash in man,
In me would be a rasher!

One thing I ask when I am dead,
And past the Stygian ditches—
And that is, let my schoolmaster
Have one of my two flitches:

’Twas he who taught my letters so
I ne’er mistook or miss’d ’em,
Simply by ringing at the nose,
According to Bell’s system.

MY SON AND HEIR.

I.

Y mother bids me bind my heir,
But not the trade where I should bind;
To place a boy—the how and where—
It is the plague of parent-kind!

II.

She does not hint the slightest plan,
Nor what indentures to endorse;
Whether to bind him to a man,—
Or, like Mazeppa, to a horse.

III.

What line to choose of likely rise,
To something in the Stocks at last,—
“Fast bind, fast find,” the proverb cries,
I find I cannot bind so fast!

IV.

A Statesman James can never be;
A Tailor?—there I only learn
His chief concern is cloth, and he
Is always cutting his concern.

V.

A Seedsman?—I’d not have him so;
A Grocer’s plum might disappoint;
A Butcher?—no, not that—although
I hear “the times are out of joint!”

VI.

Too many of all trades there be,
Like Pedlars, each has such a pack;
A merchant selling coals?—we see
The buyer send to cellar back.

VII.

A Hardware dealer?—that might please,
But if his trade’s foundation leans
On spikes and nails, he won’t have ease
When he retires upon his means.

VIII.

A Soldier?—there he has not nerves;
A Sailor seldom lays up pelf:
A Baker?—no, a baker serves
His customer before himself.

IX.

Dresser of hair?—that’s not the sort;
A joiner jars with his desire—
A Churchman?—James is very short,
And cannot to a church aspire.

X.

A Lawyer?—that’s a hardish term!
A Publisher might give him ease,
If he could into Longman’s firm
Just plunge at once “in medias Rees.”

XI.

A shop for pot, and pan, and cup,
Such brittle Stock I can’t advise;
A Builder running houses up,
Their gains are stories—maybe lies!

XII.

A Coppersmith I can’t endure—
Nor petty Usher A, B, C-ing;
A Publican? no father, sure,
Would be the author of his being!

XIII.

A Paper-maker?—come he must
To rags before he sells a sheet—
A Miller?—all his toil is just
To make a meal—he does not eat.

XIV.

A Currier?—that by favour goes—
A Chandler gives me great misgiving—
An Undertaker?—one of those
That do not hope to get their living!

XV.

Three Golden Balls?—I like them not;
An Auctioneer I never did—
The victim of a slavish lot,
Obliged to do as he is bid!

XVI.

A Broker watching fall and rise
Of Stock?—I’d rather deal in stone,—
A Printer?—there his toils comprise
Another’s work beside his own.

XVII.

A Cooper?—neither I nor Jem
Have any taste or turn for that,—
A fish-retailer?—but with him,
One part of trade is always flat.

XVIII.

A Painter?—long he would not live,—
An Artist’s a precarious craft—
In trade Apothecaries give,
But very seldom take, a draught.

XIX.

A Glazier?—what if he should smash!
A Crispin he shall not be made—
A Grazier may be losing cash,
Although he drives a “roaring trade.”

XX.

Well, something must be done! to look
On all my little works around—
James is too big a boy, like book,
To leave upon the shelf unbound.

XXI.

But what to do?—my temples ache
From evening’s dew till morning’s pearl,
What course to take my boy to make—
Oh could I make my boy—a girl!

CLUBS,
TURNED UP BY A FEMALE HAND.

“Clubs! Clubs! part ’em! part ’em! Clubs! Clubs!”—Ancient Cries of London.

F all the modern schemes of Man,
That time has brought to bear,
A plague upon the wicked plan
That parts the wedded pair!
My female friends they all agree
They hardly know their hubs;
And heart and voice unite with me,
“We hate the name of Clubs!”

One selfish course the Wretches keep;
They come at morning chimes,
To snatch a few short hours of sleep—
Rise—breakfast—read the Times—
Then take their hats, and post away,
Like Clerks or City scrubs,
And no one sees them all the day,—
They live, eat, drink, at Clubs!

On what they say, and what they do,
They close the Club-House gates;
But one may guess a speech or two,
Though shut from their debates:
“The Cook’s a hasher—nothing more—
The Children noisy grubs—
A Wife’s a quiz, and home’s a bore”—
Yes,—that’s the style at Clubs!

With Rundle, Dr. K., or Glasse,
And such Domestic Books,
They once put up—but now, alas!
It’s hey! for foreign cooks!
“When will you dine at home, my Dove?”
I say to Mister Stubbs,—
“When Cook can make an omelette, love,—
An omelette like the Clubs!”

Time was, their hearts were only placed
On snug domestic schemes,
The book for two—united taste,—
And such connubial dreams,—
Friends dropping in at close of day
To singles, doubles, rubs,—
A little music—then the tray—
And not a word of Clubs!

But former comforts they condemn;
French kickshaws they discuss,
They take their wine, the wine takes them,
And then they favour us:—
From some offence they can’t digest,
As cross as bears with cubs,
Or sleepy, dull, and queer, at best—
That’s how they come from Clubs!

It’s very fine to say “Subscribe
To Andrews’—can’t you read?”
When Wives, the poor neglected tribe,
Complain how they proceed!
They’d better recommend at once
Philosophy and tubs,—
A woman need not be a dunce
To feel the wrong of Clubs.

A set of savage Goths and Picts,
Would seek us now and then—
They’re pretty pattern-Benedicts
To guide our single men!
Indeed my daughters both declare
“Their Beaux shall not be subs.
To White’s, or Black’s, or anywhere,—
They’ve seen enough of Clubs!”

They say, “without the marriage ties,
They can devote their hours
To catechize or botanize—
Shells, Sunday Schools, and flow’rs—
Or teach a Pretty Poll new words,
Tend Covent-Garden shrubs,
Nurse dogs and chirp to little birds—
As Wives do since the Clubs.”

Alas! for those departed days
Of social wedded life,
When married folks had married ways,
And lived like Man and Wife!
Oh! Wedlock then was pick’d by none—
As safe a lock as Chubb’s!
But couples, that should be as one,
Are now the Two of Clubs!

Of all the modern schemes of man
That time has brought to bear,
A plague upon the wicked plan
That parts the wedded pair!
My female friends they all allow
They meet with slights, and snubs,
And say, “They have no husbands now,—
They’re married to their Clubs!”

THE UNITED FAMILY.

“We stick at nine.”—Mrs. Battle.

“Thrice to thine
And thrice to mine,
And thrice again,
To make up nine.”
—The Weird Sisters in Macbeth.

OW oft in families intrudes
The demon of domestic feuds,
One liking this, one hating that,
Each snapping each, like dog and cat,
With divers bents and tastes perverse,
One’s bliss, in fact, another’s curse.
How seldom anything we see
Like our united family!

Miss Brown of chapels goes in search,
Her sister Susan likes the church;
One plays at cards, the other don’t;
One will be gay, the other won’t:
In pray’r and preaching one persists,
The other sneers at Methodists;
On Sundays ev’n they can’t agree
Like our united family.

There’s Mr. Bell, a Whig at heart,
His lady takes the Tories’ part,
While William, junior, nothing loth,
Spouts Radical against them both.
One likes the News, one takes the Age,
Another buys the unstamped page;
They all say I, and never we,
Like our united family.

Not so with us;—with equal zeal
We all support Sir Robert Peel;

LOVE AND A COTTAGE.

SINGLE BLESSEDNESS.

Of Wellington our mouths are full,
We dote on Sundays on John Bull,
With Pa and Ma on selfsame side,
Our house has never to divide—
No opposition members be
In our united family.

Miss Pope her “Light Guitar” enjoys,
Her father “cannot bear the noise,”
Her mother’s charm’d with all her songs,
Her brother jangles with the tongs.
Thus discord out of music springs,
The most unnatural of things,
Unlike the genuine harmony
In our united family!

We all on vocal music dote;
To each belongs a tuneful throat,
And all prefer that Irish boon
Of melody—“The Young May Moon”—
By choice we all select the harp,
Nor is the voice of one too sharp,
Another flat—all in one key
Is our united family.

Miss Powell likes to draw and paint,
But then it would provoke a saint,
Her brother takes her sheep for pigs,
And says her trees are periwigs.
Pa praises all, black, blue, or brown;
And so does Ma—but upside down!
They cannot with the same eye see,
Like our united family.

Miss Patterson has been to France,
Her heart’s delight is in a dance;
The thing her brother cannot bear,
So she must practise with a chair.
Then at a waltz her mother winks;
But Pa says roundly what he thinks,
All dos-à-dos, not vis-à-vis,
Like our united family.

We none of us that whirling love,
Which both our parents disapprove,
A hornpipe we delight in more,
Or graceful Minuet de la Cour—
A special favourite with Mamma,
Who used to dance it with Papa,
In this we still keep step, you see,
In our united family.

Then books—to bear the Cobb’s debates!
One worships Scott—another hates,
Monk Lewis Ann fights stoutly for,
And Jane likes “Bunyan’s Holy War.”
The father on Macculloch pores,
The mother says all books are bores;
But blue serene as heav’n are we,
In our united family.

We never wrangle to exalt
Scott, Banim, Bulwer, Hope, or Galt,
We care not whether Smith or Hook,
So that a novel be the book,
And in one point we all are fast,
Of novels we prefer the last,—
In that the very heads agree
Of our united family!

To turn to graver matters still,
How much we see of sad self-will!
Miss Scrope, with brilliant views in life,
Would be a poor lieutenant’s wife.
A lawyer has her Pa’s good word,
Her Ma has looked her out a Lord,
What would they not all give to be
Like our united family!

By one congenial taste allied,
Our dreams of bliss all coincide,
We’re all for solitudes and cots,
And love, if we may choose our lots.
As partner in the rural plan
Each paints the same dear sort of man;
One heart alone there seems to be
In our united family.

One heart, one hope, one wish, one mind,—
One voice, one choice, all of a kind,—
And can there be a greater bliss—
A little heav’n on earth—than this?
The truth to whisper in your ear,
It must be told!—we are not near
The happiness that ought to be
In our united family!

Alas! ’tis our congenial taste
That lays our little pleasures waste—
We all delight, no doubt, to sing,
We all delight to touch the string,
But where’s the heart that nine may touch?
And nine “May Moons” are eight too much—
Just fancy nine, all in one key,
Of our united family!

The play—Oh how we love a play,
But half the bliss is shorn away;
On winter nights we venture nigh,
But think of houses in July!
Nine crowded in a private box,
Is apt to pick the stiffest locks—
Our curls would all fall out, though we
Are one united family!

In art the self-same line we walk,
We all are fond of heads in chalk,
We one and all our talent strain
Adelphi prizes to obtain;
Nine turban’d Turks are duly sent,
But can the royal Duke present
Nine silver palettes—no, not he—
To our united family.

Our eating shows the very thing,
We all prefer the liver-wing,
Asparagus when scarce and thin,
And peas directly they come in,
The marrow-bone—if there be one—
The ears of hare when crisply done,
The rabbit’s brain—we all agree
In our united family.

In dress the same result is seen,
We all so doat on apple-green;
But nine in green would seem a school
Of charity to quizzing fool—
We cannot all indulge our will
With “that sweet silk on Ludgate Hill,”
No remnant can sufficient be
For our united family.

In reading hard is still our fate,
One cannot read o’erlooked by eight,
And nine “Disowned”—nine “Pioneers,”
Nine “Chaperons,” nine “Buccaneers,”
Nine “Maxwells,” nine “Tremaines,” and such,
Would dip into our means too much—
Three months are spent o’er volumes three,
In our united family.

Unhappy Muses! if the Nine
Above in doom with us combine,—
In vain we breathe the tender flame,
Our sentiments are all the same,
And nine complaints address’d to Hope
Exceed the editorial scope,
One in, and eight put out, must be
Of our united family!

But this is nought—of deadlier kind,
A ninefold woe remains behind.
O why were we so art and part?
So like in taste, so one in heart?
Nine cottages may be to let,
But here’s the thought to make us fret,
We cannot each add Frederick B.
To our united family.

THE DEAD ROBBERY.

“Here’s that will sack a city.”—Henry the IVth.

F all the causes that induce mankind
To strike against themselves a mortal docket,
Two eminent above the rest we find—
To be in love, or to be out of pocket:
Both have made many melancholy martyrs,
But p’rhaps, of all the felonies de se,
By ponds, and pistols, razors, ropes, and garters,
Two-thirds have been through want of £. s. d.!
Thus happen’d it with Peter Bunce;
Both in the dumps and out of them at once,
From always drawing blanks in Fortune’s lottery,
At last, impatient of the light of day,
He made his mind up to return his clay
Back to the pottery.

Feigning a raging tooth that drove him mad,
From twenty divers druggists’ shops
He begg’d enough of laudanum by drops
T’ effect the fatal purpose that he had;
He drank them, died, and while old Charon ferried him,
The Coroner convened a dozen men,
Who found his death was phial-ent—and then
The Parish buried him!
Unwatch’d, unwept,
As commonly a Pauper sleeps, he slept;
There could not be a better opportunity
For bodies to steal a body so ill kept,
With all impunity.
In fact, when Night o’er human vice and folly
Had drawn her very necessary curtains,
Down came a fellow with a sack and spade,
Accustom’d many years to drive a trade,
With that Anatomy more Melancholy
Than Burton’s!

The Watchman in his box was dozing;
The Sexton drinking at the Cheshire Cheese;
No fear of any creature interposing,
The human Jackal work’d away at ease:
He toss’d the mould to left and right,
The shabby coffin came in sight,
And soon it open’d to his double-knocks,—
When lo! the stiff’un that he thought to meet,
Starts sudden up, like Jacky-in-a-box,
Upon his seat!
Awaken’d from his trance,
For so the laudanum had wrought by chance,
Bunce stares up at the moon, next looking level,
He spies a shady Figure, tall and bony,
Then shudders out these words “Are—you—the—Devil?”
“The Devil a bit of him,” says Mike Mahoney,
“I’m only com’d here, hoping no affront,
To pick up honestly a little blunt—”
“Blunt!” echoes Bunce, with a hoarse croak of laughter,—
“Why, man, I turn’d life’s candle in the socket,
Without a rap in either pocket,
For want of that same blunt you’re looking after!”
“That’s true,” says Mike, “and many a pretty man
Has cut his stick upon your very plan,
Not worth a copper, him and all his trumps,
And yet he’s fetch’d a dacent lot of stuff,
Provided he was sound and fresh enough,
And dead as dumps.”
“I take,” quoth Bunce, with a hard wink, “the fact is,
You mean a subject for a surgeon’s practice,—
I hope the question is not out of reason,
But just suppose a lot of flesh and bone,
For instance, like my own,
What might it chance to fetch now, at this season?”
“Fetch, is it?” answers Mike, “why prices differ,—
But taking this same small bad job of ours,
I reckon, by the pow’rs!
I’ve lost ten pound by your not being stiffer!”

“Ten pounds!” Bunce echoes in a sort of flurry,
“Odd zounds!
Ten pounds,
How sweet it sounds,
Ten pounds!”
And on his feet upspringing in a hurry—
It seem’d the operation of a minute—
A little scuffle—then a whack—
And then he took the Body Snatcher’s sack
And poked him in it!
Such is this life!
A very pantomime for tricks and strife!
See Bunce, so lately in Death’s passive stock,
Invested, now as active as a griffin,
Walking—no ghost—in velveteens and smock,
To sell a stiff’un!

A flash of red, then one of blue,
At last, like lighthouse, came in view;
Bunce rang the nightbell; wiped his highlows muddy;
His errand told; the sack produced;
And by a sleepy boy was introduced
To Dr. Oddy, writing in his study
The bargain did not take long time to settle,
“Ten pounds,
Odd zounds!
How well it sounds,
Ten pounds,”
Chink’d into Bunce’s palm in solid metal.
With joy half-crazed,
It seem’d some trick of sense, some airy gammon,
He gazed and gazed,
At last, possess’d with the old lust of Mammon,
Thought he, “With what a very little trouble,
This little capital I now might double——”
Another scuffle of its usual brevity,—
And Doctor Oddy, in his suit of black,
Was finishing, within the sack,
His “Thoughts upon Longevity!”

The trick was done. Without a doubt,
The sleepy boy let Bunce and burthen out;
Who coming to a lone convenient place,
The body stripp’d; hid all the clothes; and then,
Still favoured by the luck of evil men,
Found a new customer in Dr. Case.
All more minute particulars to smother,
Let it suffice,
Nine guineas was the price
For which one doctor bought the other;
As once I heard a Preacher say in Guinea,
“You see how one black sin bring on anudder,
Like little nigger pickaninny,
A-riding pick-a-back upon him mudder!”
“Humph!” said the Doctor, with a smile sarcastic,
Seeming to trace
Some likeness in the face,
“So death at last has taken old Bombastic!”
But in the very middle of his joking,—
The subject, still unconscious of the scoff—
Seized all at once with a bad fit of choking,
He too was taken of!
Leaving a fragment “On the Hooping Cough.”

Satan still sending luck,
Another body found another buyer:
For ten pounds ten the bargain next was struck,
Dead doctors going higher.
“Here,” said the purchaser, with smile quite pleasant,
Taking a glimpse at his departed brother,
“Here’s half a guinea in the way of present—
Subjects are scarce, and when you get another,
Let me be first.”—Bunce took him at his word,
And suddenly his old atrocious trick did,
Sacking M.D. the third,
Ere he could furnish “Hints to the Afflicted.”

Flush’d with success,
Beyond all hope or guess,
His new dead robbery upon his back,
Bunce plotted—such high flights ambition takes,—
To treat the Faculty like ducks and drakes,
And sell them all ere they could utter “Quack!”
But fate opposed. According to the schools,
When men become insufferably bad,
The gods confer to drive them mad;
March hairs upon the heads of April fools!
Tempted by the old demon avaricious,
Bunce traded on too far into the morning;
Till nods, and winks, and looks, and signs suspicious,
Ev’n words malicious,
Forced on him rather an unpleasant warning.
Glad was he to perceive, beside a wicket,
A porter, ornamented with a ticket,
Who did not seem to be at all too busy—
“Here, my good man,
Just show me, if you can,
A doctor’s—if you want to earn a tizzy!”

Away the porter marches,
And with grave face, obsequious precedes him,
Down crooked lanes, round corners, under arches;
At last, up an old-fashion’d staircase leads him,
Almost impervious to the morning ray,
Then shows a door—“There, that’s a doctor’s reckon’d,
A rare Top-Sawyer, let who will come second—
Good day.”

“I’m right,” thought Bunce, “as any trivet;
Another venture—and then up I give it!”
He rings—the door, just like a fairy portal,
Opens untouch’d by mortal——
He gropes his way into a dingy room,
And hears a voice come growling through the gloom,
“Well—eh?—Who? What?—Speak out at once!”
“I will,” says Bunce.
“I’ve got a sort of article to sell;
Medical gemmen knows me very well—”
But think Imagination how it shock’d her
To hear the voice roar out, “Death! Devil! d—n!
Confound the vagabond, he thinks I am
A rhubarb-and-magnesia Doctor!”
“No Doctor!” exclaim’d Bunce, and dropp’d his jaw,
But louder still the voice began to bellow,
“Yes,—yes,—odd zounds!—I am a Doctor, fellow,
At law!”
The word sufficed.—Of things Bunce feared the most
(Next to a ghost)
Was law,—or any of the legal corps,—
He dropp’d at once his load of flesh and bone,
And, caring for no body, save his own,
Bolted,—and lived securely till fourscore,
From never troubling Doctors any more!

A PARENTAL ODE TO MY SON, AGED THREE YEARS AND FIVE MONTHS.

HOU happy, happy elf!
(But stop,—first let me kiss away that tear)—
Thou tiny image of myself!
(My love, he’s poking peas into his ear!)
Thou merry, laughing sprite!
With spirits feather-light,
Untouch’d by sorrow, and unsoil’d by sin—
(Good heavn’s! the child is swallowing a pin!)
Thou little tricksy Puck!
With antic toys so funnily bestuck,
Light as the singing bird that wings the air—
(The door! the door! he’ll tumble down the stair!)
Thou darling of thy sire!
(Why, Jane! he’ll set his pinafore a-fire!)
Thou imp of mirth and joy!
In Love’s dear chain so strong and bright a link,
Thou idol of thy parents—(Drat the boy!
There goes my ink!)

Thou cherub—but of earth;
Fit playfellow for Fays, by moonlight pale,
In harmless sport and mirth,
(That dog will bite him if he pulls its tail!)

Thou human humming-bee, extracting hone
From ev’ry blossom in the world that blows,
Singing in Youth’s Elysium ever sunny,
(Another tumble!—that’s his precious nose!)

Thy father’s pride and hope!
(He’ll break the mirror with that skipping-rope!)

ARTHUR’S SEAT.

A TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SON.

With pure heart newly stamp’d from Nature’s mint—
(Where did he learn that squint?)
Thou young domestic dove!
(He’ll have that jug off, with another shove!)
Dear nurseling of the hymeneal nest!
(Are those torn clothes his best?)
Little epitome of man!
(He’ll climb upon the table, that’s his plan!)
Touched with the beauteous tints of dawning life—
(He’s got a knife!)

Thou enviable being!
No storms, no clouds, in thy blue sky foreseeing,
Play on, play on,
My elfin John!
Toss the light ball—bestride the stick—
(I knew so many cakes would make him sick!)
With fancies, buoyant as the thistle-down,
Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk,
With many a lamb-like frisk,
(He’s got the scissors, snipping at your gown!)

Thou pretty opening rose!
(Go to your mother, child, and wipe your nose!)
Balmy and breathing music like the South,
(He really brings my heart into my mouth!)
Fresh as the morn, and brilliant as its star,—
(I wish that window had an iron bar!)
Bold as the hawk, yet gentle as the dove,
(I tell you what, my love,
I cannot write unless he’s sent above!)

A SERENADE.

“Lullaby, oh, lullaby!”
Thus I heard a father cry,
“Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
The brat will never shut an eye;
Hither come, some power divine!
Close his lids or open mine!”

“Lullaby, oh, lullaby!”
What the devil makes him cry?
“Lullaby, oh, lullaby!”
Still he stares—I wonder why?
Why are not the sons of earth
Blind, like puppies, from the birth?

“Lullaby, oh, lullaby!”
Thus I heard the father cry;
“Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Mary, you must come and try!—
Hush, oh, hush, for mercy’s sake—
The more I sing, the more you wake!”

“Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Fie, you little creature, fie;
Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Is no poppy-syrup nigh?
Give him some, or give him all,
I am nodding to his fall!”

“Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Two such nights, and I shall die!
Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
He’ll be bruised, and so shall I,—
How can I from bedposts keep,
When I’m walking in my sleep?”

“Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Sleep his very looks deny—
Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Nature soon will stupify—
My nerves relax,—my eyes grow dim—
Who’s that fallen—me or him?”

AN INCENDIARY SONG.

OME, all conflagrating fellows,
Let us have a glorious rig:
Sing old Rose, and burn the bellows!
Burn me, but I’ll burn my wig!

Christmas time is all before us:
Burn all puddings, north and south.
Burn the Turkey—Burn the Devil!
Burn snap-dragon! burn your mouth!

Burn the coals! they’re up at sixty!
Burn Burn’s Justice—burn Old Coke.
Burn the chestnuts! Burn the shovel!
Burn a fire, and burn the smoke!

Burn burnt almonds. Burn burnt brandy.
Let all burnings have a turn.
Burn Chabert, the Salamander,—
Burn the man that wouldn’t burn!

Burn the old year out, don’t ring it;
Burn the one that must begin.
Burn Lang Syne; and, whilst you’re burning,
Burn the burn he paidled in.

Burn the boxing! Burn the Beadle!
Burn the baker! Burn his man!
Burn the butcher—Burn the dustman,
Burn the sweeper, if you can!

Burn the Postman! burn the postage,
Burn the knocker—burn the bell!
Burn the folks that come for money!
Burn the bills—and burn ’em well.

Burn the Parish! Burn the rating!
Burn all taxes in a mass.
Burn the Paving! Burn the lightning!
Burn the burners! Burn the gas!

Burn all candles, white or yellow—
Burn for war, and not for peace;
Burn the Czar of all the Tallow!
Burn the King of all the Greece!

Burn all canters—burn in Smithfield.
Burn Tea-Total hum and bug.
Burn his kettle, burn his water,
Burn his muffin, burn his mug!

Burn the breeks of meddling vicars,
Picking holes in Anna’s Urns!
Burn all Steers’s Opodeldoc,
Just for being good for burns.

Burn all Swindlers! Burn Asphaltum!
Burn the money-lenders down—
Burn all schemes that burn one’s fingers!
Burn the Cheapest House in town!

Burn all bores and boring topics;
Burn Brunel—aye, in his hole!
Burn all subjects that are Irish!
Burn the niggers black as coal!

Burn all Boz’s imitators!
Burn all tales without a head!
Burn a candle near the curtain!
Burn your Burns, and burn your bed!

Burn all wrongs that won’t be righted,
Poor poor Soup, and Spanish claims—
Burn that Bell, and burn his Vixen!
Burn all sorts of burning shames!

Burn the Whigs! and burn the Tories!
Burn all parties, great and small!
Burn that everlasting Poynder—
Burn his Suttees once for all!

Burn the fop that burns tobacco.
Burn a Critic that condemns.—
Burn Lucifer and all his matches!
Burn the fool that burns the Thames!

Burn all burning agitators—
Burn all torch-parading elves!
And oh! burn Parson Stephen’s speeches,
If they haven’t burnt themselves.

COPY.
A NEW SPECIES OF POETRY.

F I were used to writing verse,
And had a Muse not so perverse,
But prompt at Fancy’s call to spring
And Carol like a bird in Spring;
Or like a Bee, in summer time,
That hums about a bed of thyme,
And gathers honey and delights
From ev’ry blossom where it ‘lights;
If I, alas! had such a Muse,
To touch the Reader or amuse,
And breathe the true poetic vein,
This page should not be fill’d in vain!
But ah! the power was never mine
To dig for gems in Fancy’s mine:
Or wander over land and main
To seek the Fairies’ old domain—
To watch Apollo while he climbs
His throne in oriental climes;
Or mark the “gradual dusky veil”
Drawn over Tempé’s tuneful vale,
In classic lays remembered long—
Such flights to bolder wings belong;
To Bards who on that glorious height,
Of sun and song, Parnassus hight,
Partake the fire divine that burns, }
In Milton, Pope, and Scottish Burns, }
Who sang his native braes and burns. }

For me a novice strange and new,
Who ne’er such inspiration knew,
But weave a verse with travail sore,
Ordain’d to creep and not to soar,
A few poor lines alone I write,
Fulfilling thus a friendly rite,
Not meant to meet the Critic’s eye,
For oh! to hope from such as I,
For anything that’s fit to read,
Were trusting to a broken reed!

1st of April, 1840. E. M. G.

SKIPPING. A MYSTERY.

ITTLE Children skip,
The rope so gaily gripping,
Tom and Harry,
Jane and Mary,
Kate, Diana,
Susan, Anna,
All are fond of skipping!

The Grasshoppers all skip,
The early dew-drop sipping,
Under, over,
Bent and clover,
Daisy, sorrel,
Without quarrel,
All are fond of skipping!

The tiny Fairies skip,
At midnight softly tripping;
Puck and Peri,
Never weary,
With an antic,
Quite romantic,
All are fond of skipping!

The little Boats they skip,
Beside the heavy Shipping,
While the squalling
Winds are calling,
Falling, rising,
Rising, falling,
All are fond of skipping!

The pale Diana skips,
The silver billows tipping,
With a dancing
Lustre glancing
To the motion
Of the ocean—
All are fond of skipping!

The little Flounders skip,
When they feel the dripping;
Scorching, frying,
Jumping, trying
If there is not
Any shying,
All are fond of skipping!

The very Dogs they skip,
While threatened with a whipping,
Wheeling, prancing,
Learning dancing,
To a measure,
What a pleasure!
All are fond of skipping!

The little Fleas they skip,
And nightly come a nipping,
Lord and Lady,
Jude and Thady,
In the night
So dark and shady—
All are fond of skipping!

The Autumn Leaves they skip;
When blasts the trees are stripping;
Bounding, whirling,
Sweeping, twirling,
And in wanton
Mazes curling,
All are fond of skipping!

The Apparitions skip,
Some mortal grievance ripping,
Thorough many
A crack and cranny,
And the keyhole
Good as any—
Are all fond of skipping!

But oh! how Readers skip,
In heavy volumes dipping!
* * * * * and * * * * *
* * * * and * * * * *
* * * and * * * * *
* * * * * * * *
All are fond of skipping!

A BUTCHER.

HOE’ER has gone thro’ London Street,
Has seen a Butcher gazing at his meat,
And how he keeps
Gloating upon a sheep’s
Or bullock’s personals, as if his own;
How he admires his halves,
And quarters—and his calves,
As if in truth upon his own legs grown;—
His fat! his suet!
His kidneys peeping elegantly thro’ it!
His thick flank!
And his thin!
His shank!
His shin!
Skin of his skin, and bone too of his bone!

With what an air
He stands aloof, across the thoroughfare
Gazing—and will not let a body by,
Tho’ buy! buy! buy! be constantly his cry;
Meanwhile his arms a-kimbo, and a pair
Of Rhodian legs, he revels in a stare
At his Joint Stock—for one may call it so,
Howbeit without a Co.
The dotage of self-love was never fonder
Than he of his brute bodies all a-row.

Narcissus in the wave did never ponder,
With love so strong,
On his “portrait charmant,”
As our vain butcher on his carcass yonder.
Look at his sleek round skull!
How bright his cheek, how rubicund his nose is!
His visage seems to be
Ripe for beef-tea;
Of brutal juices the whole man is full—
In fact, fulfilling the metempsychosis,
The Butcher is already half a Bull.

A PUBLIC DINNER.

“Sit down and fall to, said the Barmecide.”—Arabian Nights.

T seven you just nick it,
Give card—get wine ticket;
Walk round through the Babel,
From table to table,
To find—a hard matter—
Your name in a platter;
Your wish was to sit by
Your friend Mr. Whitby,
But Steward’s assistance
Has placed you at distance,
And, thanks to arrangers,
You sit among strangers;
But too late for mending;
Twelve sticks come attending
A stick of a Chairman,
A little dark spare man,
With bald shining nob,
‘Mid Committee swell-mob;
In short, a short figure,
You thought the Duke bigger;
Then silence is wanted,
Non Nobis is chanted;
Then Chairman reads letter,
The Duke’s a regretter,
A promise to break it,
But chair he can’t take it;
Is grieved to be from us,
But sends friend Sir Thomas,
And what is far better,
A cheque in the letter.
Hear! hear! and a clatter,
And there ends the matter.

Now soups come and fish in,
And C—— brings a dish in;
Then rages the battle,
Knives clatter, forks rattle,
Steel forks with black handles,
Under fifty wax candles;
Your soup-plate is soon full,
You sip just a spoonful.
Mr. Roe will be grateful
To send him a plateful;
And then comes the waiter,
“Must trouble for tater;”
And then you drink wine off
With somebody—nine off;
Bucellas made handy,
With Cape and bad Brandy,
Or East India Sherry,
That’s very hot—very.
You help Mr. Myrtle,
Then find your mock-turtle
Went off, while you lingered,
With waiter light-fingered.
To make up for gammon,
You order some salmon,
Which comes to your fauces
With boats without sauces.
You then make a cut on
Some Lamb big as Mutton;
And ask for some grass too,
But that you must pass too;
It served the first twenty,
But toast there is plenty.
Then, while lamb gets coldish,
A goose that is oldish—
At carving not clever—
You’re begged to dissever,
And when you thus treat it,
Find no one will eat it.
So, hungry as glutton,
You turn to your mutton,
But—no sight for laughter—
The soup it’s gone after.
Mr. Green then is very
Disposed to take Sherry,
And then Mr. Nappy
Will feel very happy;
And then Mr. Conner
Requests the same honour;
Mr. Clarke, when at leisure,
Will really feel pleasure;
Then waiter leans over
To take off a cover
From fowls which all beg of,
A wing or a leg of;
And while they all peck bone,
You take to a neck bone,
But even your hunger
Declares for a younger.
A fresh plate you call for,
But vainly you bawl for:
Now taste disapproves it,
No waiter removes it.
Still hope, newly budding,
Relies on a pudding;
But critics each minute
Set fancy agin it—
“That’s queer Vermicelli.”
“I say, Vizetelly,
There’s glue in that jelly.”
“Tarts bad altogether;
That crust’s made of leather.”
“Some custard, friend Vesey?”
“No—batter made easy.”
“Some cheese, Mr. Foster?”
“—Don’t like single Glo’ster.”
Meanwhile, to top table,
Like fox in the fable,
You see silver dishes,
With those little fishes,
The whitebait delicious
Borne past you officious;
And hear rather plainish
A sound that’s champaignish,
And glimpse certain bottles
Made long in the throttles:
And sniff—very pleasant!
Grouse, partridge, and pheasant,
And see mounds of ices
For patrons and vices,
Pine-apple, and bunches
Of grapes for sweet munches,
And fruits of all virtue
That really desert you.
You’ve nuts, but not crack ones,
Half empty, and black ones;
With oranges sallow—
They can’t be called yellow—
Some pippins well wrinkled,
And plums almond sprinkled,
Some rout cakes, and so on,
Then with business to go on;
Long speeches are stutter’d,
And toasts are well buttered,
While dames in the gallery,
All dressed in fallallery,
Look on at the mummery:
And listen to flummery.
Hip, hip! and huzzaing,
And singing and saying,
Glees, catches, orations,
And lists of donations.
Hush! a song, Mr. Tinney—
“Mr. Benbow, one guinea;
Mr. Frederick Manual,
One guinea—and annual.”
Song—Jockey and Jenny—
“Mr. Markham one guinea.”
“Have you all filled your glasses?”
Here’s a health to good lasses.
The subscription still skinny—
“Mr. Franklin—one guinea.”
Franklin looks like a ninny;
“Mr. Boreham, one guinea—
Mr. Blogg, Mr. Finney,
Mr. Tempest—one guinea,
Mr. Merrington—twenty,”
Rough music, in plenty.
Away toddles Chairman,
The little dark spare man,
Not sorry at ending,
With white sticks attending,
And some vain Tomnoddy
Votes in his own body
To fill the void seat up,
And get on his feet up,
To say, with voice squeaking,
“Unaccustomed to speaking,”
Which sends you off seeking
Your hat, number thirty—
No coach—very dirty.
So, hungry and fevered,
Wet-footed, spoilt beavered,
Eyes aching in socket,
Ten pounds out of pocket,
To Brook-street the Upper
You haste home to supper.

A CHARITY SERMON.

“‘I would have walked many a mile to have communed with you; and, believe me, I will shortly pay thee another visit; but my friends, I fancy, wonder at my stay; so let me have the money immediately.’ Trulliber then put on a stern look, and cried out, ‘Thou dost not intend to rob me?’

* * * * * *

‘I would have thee know, friend,’ addressing himself to Adams, ‘I shall not learn my duty from such as thee. I know what charity is, better than to give to vagabonds.’”—Joseph Andrews.

I’m an extremely charitable man—no collar and long hair, though a little carrotty;
Demure, half-inclined to the unknown tongues, but I never gain’d anything by Charity.
I got a little boy into the Foundling, but his unfortunate mother was traced and baited,
And the overseers found her out—and she found me out—and the child was affiliated.
Oh, Charity will come home to roost—
Like curses and chickens is Charity.

I once, near Whitehall’s very old wall, when ballads danced over the whole of it,
Put a bad five-shilling-piece into a beggar’s hat, but the old hat had got a hole in it;
And a little boy caught it in his little hat, and an officer’s eye seem’d to care for it,
As my bad crown piece went through his bad crown piece, and they took me up to Queen’s Square for it.
Oh, Charity, &c.

I let my very old (condemn’d) old house to a man, at a rent that was shockingly low,
So I found a roof for his ten motherless babes—all defunct and fatherless now;
For the plaguy one-sided party wall fell in, so did the roof, on son and daughter,
And twelve jurymen sat on eleven bodies, and brought in a very personal verdict of Manslaughter.
Oh, Charity, &c.

I pick’d up a young well-dress’d gentleman, who had fallen in a fit in St. Martin’s Court,
And charitably offer’d to see him home—for charity always seem’d to be my forte,
And I’ve had presents for seeing fallen gentlemen home, but this was a very unlucky job—
Do you know, he got my watch—my purse—and my handkerchief—for it was one of the swell mob.
Oh, Charity, &c.

Being four miles from Town, I stopt a horse that had run away with a man, when it seem’d that they must be dash’d to pieces,
Though several kind people were following him with all their might—but such following a horse his speed increases;
I held the horse while he went to recruit his strength; and I meant to ride it home, of course;
But the crowd came up and took me up—for it turn’d out the man had run away with the horse.
Oh, Charity, &c.

I watch’d last month all the drovers and drivers about the suburbs, for it’s a positive fact,
That I think the utmost penalty ought always to be enforced against everybody under Mr. Martin’s act;
But I couldn’t catch one hit over the horns, or over the shins, or on the ears, or over the head;
And I caught a rheumatism from early wet hours, and got five weeks of ten swell’d fingers in bed.
Oh, Charity, &c.

Well, I’ve utterly done with Charity, though I used so to preach about its finest fount;
Charity may do for some that are more lucky, but I can’t turn it to any account—
It goes so the very reverse way—even if one chirrups it up with a dust of piety;
That henceforth let it be understood, I take my name entirely out of the List of Subscribers to the Humane Society.
Oh, Charity, &c.

THE CHINA MENDER.

OOD morning, Mr. What-d’ye-call! Well! here’s another pretty job!
Lord help my Lady!—what a smash!—if you had only heard her sob!
It was all through Mr. Lambert: but for certain he was winey,
To think for to go to sit down on a table full of Chiney.
“Deuce take your stupid head!” says my Lady to his very face;
But politeness, you know, is nothing, when there’s Chiney in the case;
And if ever a woman was fond of Chiney to a passion
It’s my mistress, and all sorts of it, whether new or old fashion.
Her brother’s a sea-captain, and brings her home shiploads—
Such bonzes, and such dragons, and nasty, squatting things like toads;
And great nidnoddin’ mandarins, with palsies in the head:
I declare I’ve often dreamt of them, and had nightmares in my bed.
But the frightfuller they are—lawk! she loves them all the better:
She’d have Old Nick himself made of Chiney if they’d let her.

Lawk-a-mercy! break her Chiney, and it’s breaking her very heart;
If I touch’d it, she would very soon say, “Mary, we must part.”
To be sure she is unlucky: only Friday comes Master Randall,
And breaks a broken spout, and fresh chips a tea-cup handle:
He’s a dear, sweet little child, but he will so finger and touch,
And that’s why my Lady doesn’t take to children much.
Well! there’s stupid Mr. Lambert, with his two great coat flaps,
Must go and sit down on the Dresden shepherdesses’ laps,
As if there was no such things as rosewood chairs in the room;
I couldn’t have made a greater sweep with the handle of the broom.
Mercy on us! how my mistress began to rave and tear!
Well! after all, there’s nothing like good ironstone ware for wear.
If ever I marry, that’s flat, I’m sure it won’t be John Dockery,—
I should be a wretched woman in a shop full of crockery.
I should never like to wipe it, though I love to be neat and tidy,
And afraid of mad bulls on market-days every Monday and Friday.
I’m very much mistook if Mr. Lambert’s will be a catch;
The breaking the Chiney will be the breaking-off of his own match.
Missis wouldn’t have an angel, if he was careless about Chiney;
She never forgives a chip, if it’s ever so small and tiny.
Lawk! I never saw a man in all my life in such a taking;
I could find in my heart to pity him for all his mischief-making.
To see him stand a-hammering and stammering, like a zany;
But what signifies apologies, if they won’t mend old Chaney!
If he sent her up whole crates full, from Wedgwood’s and Mr. Spode’s,
He couldn’t make amends for the crack’d mandarins and smash’d toads.
Well! every one has their tastes, but, for my part, my own self,
I’d rather have the figures on my poor dear grandmother’s old shelf:
A nice pea-green poll-parrot, and two reapers with brown ears of corns,
And a shepherd with a crook after a lamb with two gilt horns,
And such a Jemmy Jessamy in top boots and sky-blue vest,
And a frill and flower’d waistcoat, with a fine bowpot at the breast.
God help her, poor old soul! I shall come into ’em at her death,
Though she’s a hearty woman for her years, except her shortness of breath.
Well! you think the things will mend—if they won’t, Lord mend us all!
My Lady will go in fits, and Mr. Lambert won’t need to call:
I’ll be bound in any money, if I had a guinea to give,
He won’t sit down again on Chiney the longest day he has to live.
Poor soul! I only hope it won’t forbid his bans of marriage,
Or he’d better have sat behind on the spikes of my Lady’s carriage.
But you’ll join ’em all of course, and stand poor Mr. Lambert’s friend;
I’ll look in twice a day, just to see, like, how they mend.
To be sure it is a sight that might draw tears from dogs and cats;
Here’s this pretty little pagoda, now, has lost four of its cocked hats:
Be particular with the pagoda: and then here’s this pretty bowl—
The Chinese Prince is making love to nothing because of this hole;
And here’s another Chinese man, with a face just like a doll—
Do stick his pigtail on again, and just mend his parasol.
But I needn’t tell you what to do; only do it out of hand,
And charge whatever you like to charge—my Lady won’t make a stand.
Well! good morning, Mr. What-d’ye-call; for it’s time our gossip ended:
And you know the proverb, the less as is said, the sooner the Chiney’s mended.

ON A PICTURE OF HERO AND LEANDER.

HY, Lover, why
Such a water rover?
Would she love thee more
For coming half seas over?

Why, Lady, why,
So in love with dipping?
Must a lad of Greece
Come all over dripping?

Why, Cupid, why
Make the passage brighter?
Were not any boat
Better than a lighter?

Why, Madam, why
So intrusive standing?
Must thou be on the stair
When he’s on the landing?

MISS FANNY’S FAREWELL FLOWERS.