Chapter XXI (2)

Then my nevys too, they must drag me off to go with them gathering nuts,
And we always set out by the longest way and return by the shortest cuts.
Short cuts, indeed! But it’s nuts to them, to get a poor lustyish aunt
To scramble through gaps, or jump over a ditch, when they’re morally certain she can’t,--
For whenever I get in some awkward scrape, and it’s almost daily the case,
Tho’ they don’t laugh out, the mischievous brats, I see the “hooray!” in their face.
There’s the other day, for my sight is short, and I saw what was green beyond,
And thought it was all terry firmer and grass, till I walked in the duckweed pond:
Or perhaps when I’ve pully-hauled up a bank they see me come launching down,
As none but a stout London female can do as is come a first time out of town.
Then how sweet, some say, on a mossy bank a verdurous seat to find,
But for my part I always found it a joy that brought a repentance behind;
For the juicy grass with its nasty green has stained a whole breadth of my gown--
And when gowns are dyed, I needn’t say, it’s much better done up in town.
As for country fare, the first morning I came I heard such a shrill piece of work!
And ever since--and it’s ten days ago--we’ve lived upon nothing but pork;
One Sunday except, and then I turn’d sick, a plague take all countrified cooks!
Why didn’t they tell me, _before_ I had dined, they made pigeon pies of the rooks?
Then the gooseberry wine, tho’ it’s pleasant when up, it doesn’t agree when it
’s down,
But it served me right, like a gooseberry, fool to look for champagne out of town?
To be sure cousin G. meant it all for the best when he started this pastoral plan,
And his wife is a worthy domestical soul and she teaches me all that she can,
Such as making of cheese, and curing of hams, but I’m sure that I never shall learn,
And I’ve fetch’d more back-ache than butter as yet by chumping away at the churn;
But in making hay, tho’ it’s tanning work, I found it more easy to make,
But it tries one’s legs, and no great relief when you’re tired to sit down on the rake.
I’d a country dance, too, at harvest home, with a regular country clown,
But, Lord! they don’t hug one round the waist and give one such smacks in town:
Then I’ve tried to make friends with the birds and the beasts, but they take to such curious rigs,
I’m always at odds with the turkey-cock, and I can’t even please the pigs.
The very hens pick holes in my hand when I grope for the new-laid eggs,
And the gander comes hissing out of the pond on purpose to flap at my legs.
I’ve been bump’d in a ditch by the cow without horns, and the old sow trampled me down,
The beasts are as vicious as any wild beasts--but they’re kept in cages in town!
Another thing is the nasty dogs--thro’ the village I hardly can stir
Since giving a bumpkin a pint of beer just to call off a barking cur;
And now you would swear all the dogs in the place were set on to hunt me down,
But neither the brutes nor the people I think are as civilly bred as in town.
Last night about twelve I was scared broad awake, and all in a tremble of fright,
But instead of a family murder it proved an owl, that flies screeching at night.
Then there’s plenty of ricks and stalks all about, and I can’t help dreaming of Swing--
In short, I think that a pastoral life is not the most happiest thing;
For, besides all the troubles I’ve mentioned before, as endured for rurality’s sake,
I’ve been stung by the bees, and I’ve set among ants, and once--ugh! I trod on
a snake!
And as to mosquitoes, they tortured me so, for I’ve got a particular skin,
I do think it’s the gnats coming out of the ponds, that drives the poor suicides in!
And after all an’t there new-laid eggs to be had upon Holborn Hill?
And dairy-fed pork in Broad St. Giles, and fresh butter wherever you will?
And a covered cart that brings Cottage Bread quite rustical-like and brown?
So one isn’t so very uncountrified in the very heart of the town.
Howsomever my mind’s made up, and although I’m sure cousin Giles will be vext,
I mean to book me an inside place up to town upon Saturday next,
And if nothing happens, soon after ten, I shall be at the Old Bell and Crown,
And perhaps I may come to the country again, when London is all burnt down.

THE DOCTOR.

A SKETCH.

“Whatever is, is right.”--POPE.

There once was a Doctor,
(No foe to the proctor,)
A physic concocter,
Whose dose was so pat,
However it acted,
One speech it extracted,--
“Yes, yes,” said the doctor,
“I meant it for that!”

And first, all “unaisy,”
Like woman that’s crazy,
In flies Mistress Casey,
“Do come to poor Pat
The blood’s running faster!
He’s torn off the plaster--”
“Yes, yes,” said the Doctor,
“I meant it for that!”

Anon, with an antic,
Quite strange and romantic,
A woman comes frantic--
“What could you be at?
My darling dear Aleck,
You’ve sent him oxalic!”
“Yes, yes,” said the Doctor,
“I meant it for that!”

Then in comes another,
Dispatch’d by his mother,
A blubbering brother,
Who gives a rat-tat--
“Oh, poor little sister
Has lick’d off a blister!”
“Yes, yes,” said the Doctor,
“I meant it for that!”

Now home comes the flunkey,
His own powder-monkey,
But dull as a donkey--
With basket and that--
“The draught for the Squire, Sir,
He chuck’d in the fire, Sir--”
“Yes, yes,” said the Doctor,
“I meant it for that!”

The next is the pompous
Head Beadle, old Bumpus--
“Lord! here is a rumpus:
That pauper, Old Nat,
In some drunken notion
Has drunk up his lotion--”
“Yes, yes,” said the Doctor,
“I meant it for that!”

At last comes a servant,
In grief very fervent:
“Alas! Doctor Derwent,
Poor Master is flat!
He’s drawn his last breath, Sir--
That dose was his death, Sir.”
“Yes, yes,” said the Doctor,
“I meant it for that!”

LAYING DOWN THE LAW.

----“I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips let no dog bark.”

MERCHANT OF VENICE.

“If thou wert born a Dog, remain so; but if thou wert born a Man,
resume thy former shape.”--ARABIAN NIGHTS.

A Poodle, Judge-like, with emphatic paw,
Dogmatically laying down the law,--
A batch of canine Counsel round the table,
Keen-eyed, and sharp of nose, and long of jaw,
At sight, at scent, at giving tongue, right able:
O, Edwin Landseer, Esquire, and R.A.,
Thou great Pictorial Æsop, say,
What is the moral of this painted fable?
O, say, accomplished artist!
Was it thy purpose, by a scene so quizzical,
To read a wholesome lesson to the Chartist,
So over partial to the means called Physical,
Sticks, staves, and swords, and guns, the tools of treason?
To show, illustrating the better course,
The very Brutes abandoning Brute Force,
The worry and the fight,
The bark and bite,
In which, says Doctor Watts, the dogs delight,
And lending shaggy ears to Law and Reason,
As uttered in that Court of high antiquity
Where sits the Chancellor, supreme as Pope,
But works--so let us hope--
In equity, not iniquity?

Or was it but a speculation
On transmigration,
How certain of our most distinguished Daniels,
Interpreters of Law’s bewildering book,
Would look
Transformed to mastiffs, setters, hounds, and spaniels
(As Brahmins in their Hindoo code advance)
With that great lawyer of the Upper House
Who rules all suits by equitable _nous_,
Become--like vile Armina’s spouse--
A Dog, called Chance?[4]
Methinks, indeed, I recognise
In those deep-set and meditative eyes
Engaged in mental puzzle,
And that portentous muzzle,
A celebrated judge, too prone to tarry
To hesitate on devious ins and outs,
And, on preceding doubts, to build _re-doubts_
That regiments could not carry--
Prolonging even Law’s delays, and still
Putting a skid upon the wheel up-hill,
Meanwhile the weary and desponding client
Seem’d--in the agonies of indecision--
In Doubting Castle, with that dreadful Giant
Described in Bunyan’s Vision!

So slow, indeed, was justice in its ways,
Beset by more than customary clogs,
Going to law in those expensive days
Was much the same as going to the Dogs!
But possibly I err,
And that sagacious and judicial creature,
So Chancellor-like in feature,
With ears so wig-like, and a cap of fur,
Looking as grave, responsible, and sage,
As if he had the guardianship, in fact,
Of all poor dogs, or crackt,
And puppies under age--
It may be that the Creature was not meant
Any especial Lord to represent,
Eldon or Erskine, Cottenham or Thurlow,
Or Brougham (more like him whose potent jaw
Is holding forth the letter of the law),
Or Lyndhurst, after the vacation’s furlough,
Presently sitting in the House of Peers,
On wool he sometimes wishes in his ears,
When touching Corn Laws, Taxes, or Tithe-piggery,
He hears a fierce attack,
And, sitting on his sack,
Listens in his great wig to greater Whiggery!

So, possibly, those others,
In coats so various, or sleek, or rough,
Aim not at any of the legal brothers,
Who wear the silken robe, or gown of stuff.
Yet who that ever heard or saw
The Counsel sitting in that solemn Court,
Who, having passed the Bar, are safe in port,
Or those great Sergeants, learned in the Law,--
Who but must trace a feature now and then
Of those forensic men,
As good at finding heirs as any harrier,
Renown’d like greyhounds for long tales--indeed,
At worrying the ear as apt as terriers,--
Good at conveyance as the hairy carriers
That bear our gloves, umbrellas, hats, and sticks,
Books, baskets, bones, or bricks,
In Deeds of Trust as sure as Tray the trusty,--
Acute at sniffing flaws on legal grounds,--
And lastly--well the catalogue it closes!--
Still following their predecessors’ noses,
Through ways however dull or dusty,
As fond of hunting precedents, as hounds
Of running after foxes more than musty.

However slow or fast,
Full of urbanity, or supercilious,
In temper wild, serene, or atrabilious,
Fluent of tongue, or prone to legal saw,
The Dogs have got a Chancellor, at last,
For Laying down the Law!
And never may the canine race regret it,
With whinings and repinings loud or deep,--
Ragged in coat, and shortened in their keep,
Worried by day, and troubled in their sleep,
With cares that prey upon the heart and fret it--
As human suitors have had cause to weep--
For what is Law, unless poor Dogs can get it
Dog-cheap?

A BLACK JOB.

“No doubt the pleasure is as great,
Of being cheated as to cheat.”--HUDIBRAS.

The history of human-kind to trace,
Since Eve--the first of dupes--our doom unriddled,
A certain portion of the human race
Has certainly a taste for being diddled.

Witness the famous Mississippi dreams!
A rage that time seems only to redouble--
The Banks, Joint-Stocks, and all the flimsy schemes,
For rolling in Pactolian streams,
That cost our modern rogues so little trouble.
No matter what,--to pasture cows on stubble,
To twist sea-sand into a solid rope,
To make French bricks and fancy bread of rubble,
Or light with gas the whole celestial cope--
Only propose to blow a bubble,
And Lord! what hundreds will subscribe for soap!

Soap!--it reminds me of a little tale,
Tho’ not a pig’s, the hawbuck’s glory,
When rustic games and merriment prevail--
But here’s my story:
Once on a time--no matter when--
A knot of very charitable men
Set up a Philanthropical Society,
Professing on a certain plan,
To benefit the race of man,
And in particular that dark variety,
Which some suppose inferior--as in vermin,
The sable is to ermine,
As smut to flour, as coal to alabaster,
As crows to swans, as soot to driven snow,
As blacking, or as ink to “milk below,”
Or yet a better simile, to show,
As ragman’s dolls to images in plaster!

However, as is usual in our city,
They had a sort of managing Committee
A board of grave responsible Directors--
A Secretary, good at pen and ink--
A Treasurer, of course, to keep the chink,
And quite an army of collectors!
Not merely male, but female duns,
Young, old, and middle-aged--of all degrees--
With many of those persevering ones,
Who mite by mite would beg a cheese!

And what might be their aim?
To rescue Afric’s sable sons from fetters--
To save their bodies from the burning shame
Of branding with hot letters--
Their shoulders from the cowhide’s bloody strokes,
Their necks from iron yokes?
To end or mitigate the ills of slavery,
The Planter’s avarice, the Driver’s knavery?
To school the heathen Negroes and enlighten ’em,
To polish up and brighten ’em,
And make them worthy of eternal bliss?
Why, no--the simple end and aim was this--
Reading a well-known proverb much amiss--
To wash and whiten ’em!

They look’d so ugly in their sable hides:
So dark, so dingy, like a grubby lot
Of sooty sweeps, or colliers, and besides,
However the poor elves
Might wash themselves,
Nobody knew if they were clean or not--
On Nature’s fairness they were quite a blot!
Not to forget more serious complaints
That even while they join’d in pious hymn,
So black they were and grim,
In face and limb,
They look’d like Devils, though they sang like Saints!

The thing was undeniable!
They wanted washing! not that slight ablution
To which the skin of the White Man is liable,
Merely removing transient pollution--
But good, hard, honest, energetic rubbing
And scrubbing,
Sousing each sooty frame from heels to head
With stiff, strong, saponaceous lather,
And pails of water--hottish rather,
But not so boiling as to turn ’em red!

So spoke the philanthropic man
Who laid, and hatch’d, and nursed the plan--
And oh! to view its glorious consummation!
The brooms and mops,
The tubs and slops,
The baths and brushes in full operation!
To see each Crow, or Jim, or John,
Go in a raven and come out a swan!
While fair as Cavendishes, Vanes, and Russels,
Black Venus rises from the soapy surge,
And all the little Niggerlings emerge
As lily-white as mussels.

Sweet was the vision--but alas!
However in prospectus bright and sunny,
To bring such visionary scenes to pass
One thing was requisite, and that was--money;
Money, that pays the laundress and her bills,
For socks and collars, shirts and frills,
Cravats and kerchiefs--money, without which
The negroes must remain as dark as pitch;
A thing to make all Christians sad and shivery,
To think of millions of immortal souls
Dwelling in bodies black as coals,
And living--so to speak--in Satan’s livery!

Money--the root of evil,--dross, and stuff!
But oh! how happy ought the rich to feel,
Whose means enable them to give enough
To blanch an African from head to heel!
How blessed--yea, thrice blessed--to subscribe
Enough to scour a tribe!
While he whose fortune was at best a brittle one,
Although he gave but pence, how sweet to know
He helped to bleach a Hottentot’s great toe,
Or little one!
Moved by this logic (or appall’d)
To persons of a certain turn so proper,
The money came when call’d,
In silver, gold, and copper,
Presents from “Friends to blacks,” or foes to whites,
“Trifles,” and “offerings,” and “widow’s mites,”
Plump legacies, and yearly benefactions,
With other gifts
And charitable lifts,
Printed in lists and quarterly transactions.
As thus--Elisha Brettel,
An iron kettle.
The Dowager Lady Scannel,
A piece of flannel.
Rebecca Pope,
A bar of soap.
The Misses Howels,
Half-a-dozen towels.
The Master Rush’s,
Two scrubbing-brushes.
Mr. T. Groom,
A stable broom,
And Mrs. Grubb,
A tub.

Great were the sums collected!
And great results in consequence expected.
But somehow, in the teeth of all endeavour,
According to reports
At yearly courts,
The blacks, confound them! were as black as ever!

Yes! spite of all the water sous’d aloft,
Soap, plain and mottled, hard and soft,
Soda and pearlash, huckaback and sand,
Brooms, brushes, palm of hand,
And scourers in the office strong and clever,
In spite of all the tubbing, rubbing, scrubbing,
The routing and the grubbing,
The blacks, confound them! were as black as ever!

In fact in his perennial speech,
The Chairman own’d the niggers did not bleach,
As he had hoped,
From being washed and soaped,
A circumstance he named with grief and pity;
But still he had the happiness to say,
For self and the Committee,
By persevering in the present way
And scrubbing at the Blacks from day to day,
Although he could not promise perfect white,
From certain symptoms that had come to light,
He hoped in time to get them gray!

Lull’d by this vague assurance,
The friends and patrons of the sable tribe
Continued to subscribe,
And waited, waited on with much endurance--
Many a frugal sister, thrifty daughter--
Many a stinted widow, pinching mother--
With income by the tax made somewhat shorter,
Still paid implicitly her crown per quarter,
Only to hear as ev’ry year came round,
That Mr. Treasurer had spent her pound;
And as she loved her sable brother,
That Mr. Treasurer must have another!

But, spite of pounds or guineas,
Instead of giving any hint
Of turning to a neutral tint,
The plaguy negroes and their piccaninnies
Were still the colour of the bird that caws--
Only some very aged souls
Showing a little gray upon their polls,
Like daws!

However, nothing dashed
By such repeated failures, or abashed,
The Court still met;--the Chairman and Directors,
The Secretary, good at pen and ink,
The worthy Treasurer, who kept the chink,
And all the cash Collectors;
With hundreds of that class, so kindly credulous,
Without whose help, no charlatan alive,
Or Bubble Company could hope to thrive,
Or busy Chevalier, however sedulous--
Those good and easy innocents in fact,
Who willingly receiving chaff for corn,
As pointed out by Butler’s tact,
Still find a secret pleasure in the act
Of being pluck’d and shorn!

However, in long hundreds there they were,
Thronging the hot, and close, and dusty court,
To hear once more addresses from the Chair,
And regular Report.

Alas! concluding in the usual strain,
That what with everlasting wear and tear,
The scrubbing-brushes hadn’t got a hair--
The brooms--mere stumps--would never serve again--
The soap was gone, the flannels all in shreds,
The towels worn to threads,
The tubs and pails too shatter’d to be mended--
And what was added with a deal of pain,
But as accounts correctly would explain,
Tho’ thirty thousand pounds had been expended--
The Blackamoors had still been wash’d in vain!

“In fact, the negroes were as black as ink,
Yet, still as the Committee dared to think,
And hoped the proposition was not rash,
A rather free expenditure of cash--”
But ere the prospect could be made more sunny--
Up jump’d a little, lemon-coloured man,
And with an eager stammer, thus began,
In angry earnest, though it sounded funny:
“What! More subscriptions! No--no--no,--not I!
You have had time--time--time enough to try!
They WON’T come white! then why--why--why--why--why
More money?”

“Why!” said the Chairman, with an accent bland,
And gentle waving of his dexter hand,
“Why must we have more dross, and dirt, and dust,
More filthy lucre, in a word, more gold--
The why, sir, very easily is told,
Because Humanity declares we must!
We’ve scrubb’d the negroes till we’ve nearly killed ’em,
And finding that we cannot wash them white,
But still their nigritude offends the sight,
_We mean to gild ’em_?”

A DISCOVERY IN ASTRONOMY.

One day--I had it from a hasty mouth,
Accustom’d to make many blunders daily,
And therefore will not name, precisely, South,
Herschell, or Baily--
But one of those great men who watch the skies,
With all their rolling, winking eyes,
Was looking at that Orb whose ancient God
Was patron of the Ode, and Song, and Sonnet,
When thus he musing cried--“It’s very odd
That no Astronomer of all the squad
Can tell the nature of those spots upon it!

“Lord, master!” muttered John, a liveried elf,
“To wonder so at spots upon the sun!
I’ll tell you what he’s done--
_Freckled himself_!”

THE SAUSAGE MAKER’S GHOST.

A LONDON LEGEND.

Somewhere in Leather Lane--
I wonder that it was not Mincing,
And for this reason most convincing,
That Mr. Brain
Dealt in those well-minced cartridges of meat
Some people like to eat--
However, all such quibbles overstepping,
In Leather Lane he lived; and drove a trade
In porcine sausages, though London made,
Call’d “Epping.”
Right brisk was the demand,
Seldom his goods stay’d long on hand,
For out of all adjacent courts and lanes,
Young Irish ladies and their swains--
Such soups of girls and broths of boys!--
Sought his delicious chains,
Preferr’d to all polonies, saveloys,
And other foreign toys--
The mere chance passengers
Who saw his “sassengers,”
Of sweetness undeniable,
So sleek, so mottled, and so “friable,”
Stepp’d in, forgetting ev’ry other thought,
And bought.

Meanwhile a constant thumping
Was heard, a sort of subterranean chumping--
Incessant was the noise!
But though he had a foreman and assistant,
With all the tools consistent,
(Besides a wife and two fine chopping boys)
His means were not yet vast enough
For chopping fast enough
To meet the call from streets, and lanes, and passages,
For first-chop “sassages.”

However, Mr. Brain
Was none of those dull men and slow,
Who, flying bird-like by a railway train,
Sigh for the heavy mails of long ago;
He did not set his face ‘gainst innovations
For rapid operations,
And therefore in a kind of waking dream
Listen’d to some hot-water sprite that hinted
To have his meat chopp’d, as the Times was printed,
By steam!

Accordingly in happy hour,
A bran-new Engine went to work
Chopping up pounds on pounds of pork
With all the energy of Two-Horse-Power,
And wonderful celerity--

When lo! when ev’rything to hope responded,
Whether his head was turn’d by his prosperity,
Whether he had some sly intrigue, in verity,
The man absconded!

His anxious Wife in vain
Placarded Leather Lane,
And all the suburbs with descriptive bills,
Such as are issued when from homes and tills
Clerks, dogs, cats, lunatics, and children roam;
Besides advertisements in all the journals,
Or weeklies or diurnals,
Beginning “LEFT HIS HOME”--
The sausage-maker, spite of white and black,
Never came back.

Never, alive!--But on the seventh night,
Just when the yawning grave its dead releases,
Filling his bedded wife with sore affright
In walk’d his grisly Sprite,
In fifty thousand pieces!
“O Mary!” so it seem’d
In hollow melancholy tone to say,
Whilst thro’ its airy shape the moonlight gleam’d
With scarcely dimmer ray--
“O Mary! let your hopes no longer flatter,
Prepare at once to drink of sorrow’s cup--
It ain’t no use to mince the matter--
The Engine’s chopp’d me up!”

TO JOSEPH HUME, ESQ., M.P.

“I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.”

Oh, Mr. Hume, thy name
Is travelling post upon the road to fame,
With four fast horses and two sharp postilions;
Thy reputation
Has friends by numeration,
Units, Tens, Hundreds, Thousands, Millions.
Whenever public men together dine,
They drink to thee
With three times three--
That’s nine.
And oft a votary proposes then
To add unto the cheering one cheer more--
Nine and One are Ten;
Or somebody, for thy honour still more keen,
Insists on four times four--
Sixteen!

In Parliament no star shines more or bigger,
And yet thou dost not care to cut a figure;
Equally art thou eloquent and able,
Whether in showing how to serve the nation
Or laying its petitions on the Table
Of Multiplication.
In motion thou art second unto none,
Though fortune on thy motions seems to frown,
For though you set a number down
You seldom carry one.
Great at speech thou art, though some folks cough,
But thou art greatest at a _paring_ off.

But never blench,
Although in stirring up corruption’s worms
You make some factions
Vulgar as certain fractions,
Almost reduced unto their lowest terms.
Go on, reform, diminish, and retrench;
Go on, for ridicule not caring;
Sift on from one to nine with all their noughts,
And make state cyphers eat up their own orts,
And only in thy saving be unsparing;
At soldiers’ uniforms make awful rackets,
Don’t trim though, but untrim their jackets.
Allow the tin mines no tin tax,
Cut off the Great Seal’s wax!

Dock all the dock-yards, lower masts and sails,
Search foot by foot the Infantry’s amounts,
Look into all the Cavalry’s accounts,
And crop their horses’ tails.
Look well to Woolwich and each Money-vote,
Examine all the cannons’ charges well,
And those who found th’ Artillery compel
To forge twelve-pounders for a five-pound note.
Watch Sandhurst too, its debts and its Cadets--
Those Military pets.
Take army--no, take Leggy Tailors
Down to the Fleet, for no one but a nincum
Out of our nation’s narrow income
Would furnish such wide trousers to the Sailors.
Next take, to wonder him,
The Master of the Horse’s horse from under him;
Retrench from those who tend on Royal ills
Wherewith to gild their pills.
And tell the Stag-hound’s Master he must keep
The deer, &c., cheap.
Close as new brooms
Scrub the Bed Chamber Grooms;
Abridge the Master of the Ceremonies
Of his very monies;
In short, at every salary have a pull,
And when folks come for pay
On quarter-day,
Stop half and make them give receipts in full.

Oh, Mr. Hume, don’t drink,
Or eat, or sleep, a wink,
Till you have argued over each reduction:
Let it be food to you, repose and suction;
Though you should make more motions by one half
Than any telegraph,
Item by item all these things enforce,
Be on your legs till lame, and talk till hoarse;
Have lozenges--mind, Dawson’s--in your pocket,
And swing your arms till aching in their socket;
Or if awake you cannot keep,
Talk of retrenchment in your sleep;
Expose each Peachum, and show up each Lockit--
Go down to the M.P.’s before you sup,
And while they’re sitting blow them up,
As Guy Fawkes could not do with all his nous;
But now we live in different Novembers,
And safely you may walk into the House,
First split its ears and then divide its members!

TO ADMIRAL GAMBIER, G.C.B.

“Well, if you reclaim such as Hood, your Society will deserve the
thanks of the country.”--_Temperance Society’s Herald_, vol. 1, No.
1, p. 8.

“My father, when last I from Guinea
Came home with abundance of wealth,
Said, ‘Jack, never be such a ninny
As to drink--’ says I, ‘Father, your health?’”

_Nothing like Grog._

Oh! Admiral Gam--I dare not mention _bier_
In such a temperate ear--
Oh! Admiral Gam--an admiral of the Blue,
Of course to read the Navy List aright,
For strictly shunning wine of either hue,
You can’t be Admiral of the Red or White:--
Oh, Admiral Gam! consider ere you call
On merry Englishmen to wash their throttles
With water only; and to break their bottles,
To stick, for fear of trespass, on the wall
Of Exeter Hall!

Consider, I beseech, the contrariety
Of cutting off our brandy, gin, and rum,
And then, by tracts, inviting us to come
And “_mix_ in your society!”
In giving rules to dine, or sup, or lunch,
Consider Nature’s ends before you league us
To strip the Isle of Rum of all its punch--
To dock the Isle of Mull of all its negus--
Or doom--to suit your milk and water view--
The Isle of Skye to nothing but sky-blue!

Consider--for appearance’ sake--consider
The sorry figure of a spirit-ridder,
Going on this crusade against the suttler;
A sort of Hudibras--without a Butler!

Consider--ere you break the ardent spirits
Of father, mother, brother, sister, daughter;
What are your beverage’s washy merits?
Gin may be low--but I have known low-water!

Consider well, before you thus deliver,
With such authority, your sloppy cannon;
Should British tars taste nothing but the _river_,
Because the _Chesapeake_ once fought the _Shannon_!

Consider, too--before all Eau-de-vie,
Schiedam, or other drinkers, you rebut--
To bite a bitten dog all curs agree;
But who would cut a man because he’s _cut_?

Consider--ere you bid the poor to fill
Their murmuring stomach with the “murmuring rill”--
Consider that their streams are not like ours,
Reflecting heaven, and margined by sweet flowers;
On their dark pools by day no sun reclines,
By night no Jupiter, no Venus shines;
Consider life’s sour taste, that bids them mix
Their rum with Acheron, or Gin with Styx;
If you must pour out water to the poor, oh!
Let it be _aqua d’ oro_!

Consider--ere as furious as a griffin,
Against a glass of grog you make such work,
A man may like a stiff’un,
And yet not be a Burke!

Consider, too, before you bid all skinkers
Turn water-drinkers,
What sort of fluid fills their native rivers;
Their Mudiboos, and Niles, and Guadalquivirs.
How should you like, yourself, in glass or mug,
The Bog--the Bug--
The Maine--the Weser--or that freezer, Neva?
Nay, take the very rill of classic ground--
Lord Byron found
Even Castaly better for Geneva.

Consider--if, to vote Reform’s arrears,
His Majesty should please to make you peers,
Your titles would be very far from trumps,
To figure in a book of blue and red:--
The Duke of Draw-well--what a name to dread!
Marquis of Main-pipe! Earl New-River-Head!
And Temperance’s chief, the Prince of Pumps!

TO SPENCER PERCEVAL, ESQ., M.P.

Oh, Mr. Spencer!
I mean no offence, sir--
Retrencher of each trencher--man or woman’s;
Maker of days of ember,
Eloquent Member
Of the House of Com--I mean to say short commons--
Thou Long Tom Coffin singing out, “Hold Fast”--
Avast!

Oh, Mr. Perceval! I’ll bet a dollar, a
Great growth of Cholera,
And new deaths reckon’d,
Will mark thy Lenten twenty-first and second.
The best of our physicians, when they con it,
Depose the malady is in the air:
Oh, Mr. Spencer! if the ill _is_ there,
Why should you bid the people live upon it?

Why should you make discourses against courses,
While doctors, though they bid us rub and chafe,
Declare, of all resources,
The man is safest who gets in the safe?
And yet you bid poor suicidal sinners
Discard their dinners,
Thoughtless how Heaven above will look upon’t,
For man to die so wantonly of want!

By way of a variety,
Think of the ineffectual piety
Of London’s Bishop, at St. Faith’s or Bride’s,
Lecturing such chamelion insides,
Only to find
He’s preaching to the wind.

Whatever others do,--or don’t,
I cannot--dare not--must not fast, and won’t,
Unless by night your day you let me keep,
And _fast_ asleep;
My constitution can’t obey such censors:
I must have meat
Three times a-day to eat;
My health’s of such a sort,--
To say the truth, in short,
The _coats_ of my stomach are not _Spencers_!

TO MISS KELLY.

ON HER OPENING THE STRAND THEATRE.

O Betty--I beg pardon--Fanny K.
(I was just thinking of your Betty Finnikin)--
Permit me this to say,
In quite a friendly way--
I like your theatre, though but a minnikin;
For though small stages Kean dislikes to spout on,
Renounce me if I don’t agree with Dowton,
The Minors are the Passions’ proper schools
For me, I never can
Find wisdom in the plan
That keeps large reservoirs for little Pooles.

I like your boxes where the audience sit
A family circle; and your little pit;
I like your little stage, where you discuss
Your pleasant bill of fare,
And show us passengers so rich and rare,
Your little stage seems quite an omnibus.

I like exceedingly your Parthian dame,
Dimly remembering dramatic codgers,
The ghost of Memory--the shade of Fame!--
Lord! what a housekeeper for Mr. Rogers!
I like your savage, of a one-horse power;
And Terence, done in Irish from the Latin;
And Sally--quite a kitchen-garden flower;
And Mrs. Drake, serene in sky-blue satin!
I like your girl as speechless as a mummy--
It shows you can play dummy!--
I like your boy, deprived of every gleam
Of light for ever--a benighted being!
And really think--though Irish it may seem--
Your blindness is worth seeing.

I like your Governess; and there’s a striking
Tale of Two Brothers, that sets tears a-flowing--
But I’m not going
All through the bill to tell you of my liking.
Suffice it, Fanny Kelly! with your art
So much in love, like others I have grown,
I really mean myself to take a part
In “Free and Easy”--at my own bespeak--
And shall three times a week
Drop in and make your pretty house my own!

TO DOCTOR HAHNEMANN.

THE HOMŒOPATHIST.

Well, Doctor,
Great concoctor
Of medicines to help in man’s distress;
Diluting down the strong to meek,
And making even the weak more weak,
“Fine by degrees, and beautifully less”--
Founder of a new system economic,
To druggists anything but comic;
Framed the whole race of Ollapods to fret,
At profits, like thy doses, very small;
To put all Doctors’ Boys in evil case,
Thrown out of bread, of physic, and of place,--
And show us old Apothecaries’ Hall
“To Let.”

How fare thy Patients? are they dead or living,
Or, well as can expected be, with such
A style of practice, liberally giving
“A sum of more to that which had too much?”
Dost thou preserve the human frame, or turf it?
Do thorough draughts cure thorough colds or not?
Do fevers yield to anything that’s hot?
Or hearty dinners neutralise a surfeit?
Is’t good advice for gastronomic ills,
When Indigestion’s face with pain is crumpling,
To cry “Discard those Peristaltic Pills,
Take a hard dumpling!”

Tell me, thou German Cousin,
And tell me honestly without a diddle,
Does an attenuated dose of rosin
Act as a _tonic_ on the old _Scotch fiddle_?
Tell me, when Anhalt-Coethen babies wriggle,
Like eels just caught by sniggle,
Martyrs to some acidity internal,
That gives them pangs infernal,
Meanwhile the lip grows black, the eye enlarges;
Say, comes there all at once a cherub-calm,
Thanks to that soothing homœopathic balm,
The half of half, of half, a drop of “_varges_?”

Suppose, for instance, upon Leipzig’s plain,
A soldier pillowed on a heap of slain,
In urgent want both of a priest and proctor;
When lo! there comes a man in green and red,
A featherless cocked-hat adorns his head,
In short a Saxon military doctor--
Would he, indeed, on the right treatment fix,
To cure a horrid gaping wound,
Made by a ball that weighed a pound,
If he well peppered it with number six?

Suppose a felon doomed to swing
Within a _rope_,
Might friends not hope
To cure him with a _string_?
Suppose his breath arrived at a full stop,
The shades of death in a black cloud before him,
Would a quintillionth dose of the New Drop
Restore him?

Fancy a man gone rabid from a bite,
Snapping to left and right,
And giving tongue like one of Sebright’s hounds,
Terrific sounds,
The pallid neighbourhood with horror cowing,
To hit the proper homœopathic mark;
Now, might not “the last taste in life” of _bark_,
Stop his _bow-wow-ing_?
Nay, with a well-known remedy to fit him,
Would he not mend, if with all proper care,
He took “_a hair
Of the dog that bit him_?”

Picture a man--we’ll say a Dutch Meinheer--
In evident emotion,
Bent o’er the bulwark of the Batavier,
Owning those symptoms queer--
Some feel in a _Sick Transit_ o’er the ocean,
Can anything in life be more pathetic
Than when he turns to us his wretched face?--
But would it mend his case
To be decillionth-dosed
With something like the ghost
Of an emetic?

Lo! now a darkened room!
Look through the dreary gloom,
And see that coverlet of wildest form,
Tost like the billows in a storm,
Where ever and anon, with groans, emerges
A ghastly head!
While two impatient arms still beat the bed,
Like a strong swimmer’s struggling with the surges;
There Life and Death are on their battle-plain,
With many a mortal ecstasy of pain--
What shall support the body in its trial,
Cool the hot blood, wild dream, and parching skin,
And tame the raging malady within--
A sniff of Next-to-Nothing in a phial?

Oh! Doctor Hahnemann, if here I laugh,
And cry together, half and half,
Excuse me, ’tis a mood the subject brings,
To think, whilst I have crowed like chanticleer,
Perchance, from some dull eye the hopeless tear
Hath gushed, with my light levity at schism,
To mourn some Martyr of Empiricism!
Perchance, on thy own system, I have given
A pang superfluous to the pains of Sorrow,
Who weeps with Memory from morn till even;
Where comfort there is none to lend or borrow,
Sighing to one sad strain,
“She will not come again,
To-morrow, nor to-morrow, nor to-morrow!”

Doctor, forgive me, if I dare prescribe
A rule for thee thyself, and all thy tribe,
Inserting a few serious words by stealth;
_Above all price of wealth
The Body’s Jewel,--not for minds profane,
Or hands, to tamper with in practice vain--
Like to a Woman’s Virtue is Man’s Health.
A heavenly gift within a holy shrine!
To be approached and touched with serious fear,
By hands made pure, and hearts of faith severe,
Even as the priesthood of the ONE divine!_

But, zounds! each fellow with a suit of black,
And, strange to fame,
With a diploma’d name,
That carries two more letters pick-a-back,
With cane, and snuff-box, powdered wig, and block,
Invents _his_ dose, as if it were a chrism,
And dares to treat our wondrous mechanism,
Familiar as the works of old Dutch clock;
Yet, how would common sense esteem the man,
Oh how, my unrelated German cousin,
Who having some such time-keeper on trial,
And finding it too fast, enforced the dial
To strike upon the Homœopathic plan
Of fourteen to the dozen?
Take my advice, ’tis given without a fee,
Drown, drown your book ten thousand fathoms deep
Like Prospero’s beneath the briny sea,
For spells of magic have all gone to sleep!
Leave no decillionth fragment of your works,
To help the interests of quacking Burkes;
Aid not in murdering even widow’s mites,--
And now forgive me for my candid zeal,
I had not said so much, but that I feel
Should you _take ill_ what here my Muse indites,
An Ode-ling more will set you all to rights.

TO THE ADVOCATES FOR THE REMOVAL OF SMITHFIELD MARKET.

“Sweeping our flocks and herds.”--DOUGLAS.

O philanthropic men!--
For this address I need not make apology--
Who aim at clearing out the Smithfield pen,
And planting further off its vile Zoology--
Permit me thus to tell,
I like your efforts well,
For routing that great nest of Hornithology!

Be not dismay’d although repulsed at first,
And driven from their Horse, and Pig, and Lamb parts,
Charge on!--you shall upon their hornworks burst,
And carry all their _Bull_-warks and their _Ram_-parts.

Go on, ye wholesale drovers!
And drive away the Smithfield flocks and herds!
As wild as Tartar-Curds,
That come so fat, and kicking, from their clovers,
Off with them all!--those restive brutes, that vex
Our streets, and plunge, and lunge, and butt, and battle;
And save the female sex
From being cow’d--like Iö--by the cattle!

Fancy,--when droves appear on
The hill of Holborn, roaring from its top,--
Your ladies--ready, as they own, to drop,
Taking themselves to Thomson’s with a _Fear-on_!

Or, in St. Martin’s Lane,
Scared by a Bullock, in a frisky vein,--
Fancy the terror of your timid daughters
While rushing souse
Into a coffee-house,
To find it--Slaughter’s.

Or fancy this:--
Walking along the street, some stranger Miss,
Her head with no such thought of danger laden,
When suddenly ’tis “Aries Taurus Virgo!”
You don’t know Latin, I translate it ergo,
Into your Areas a Bull throws the Maiden!
Think of some poor old crone
Treated, just like a penny, with a toss!
At that vile spot now grown
So generally known
For making a Cow Cross!

Nay, fancy your own selves far off from stall,
Or shed, or shop--and that an Ox infuriate
Just pins you to the wall,
Giving you a strong dose of _Oxy-Muriate_!

Methinks I hear the neighbours that live round
The Market-ground
Thus make appeal unto their civic fellows--
“’Tis well for you that live apart--unable
To hear this brutal Babel,
But our _firesides_ are troubled with their _bellows_.

“Folks that too freely sup
Must e’en put up
With their own troubles if they can’t digest;
But we must needs regard
The case as hard
The _others’_ victuals should disturb our rest,
That from our sleep _your_ food should start and jump us!
We like, ourselves, a steak,
But, Sirs, for pity’s sake!
We don’t want oxen at our doors to _rump-us_!

“If we _do_ doze--it really is too bad!
We constantly are roar’d awake or rung,
Through bullocks mad
That run in all the ‘Night Thoughts’ of our Young!”

Such are the woes of sleepers--now let’s take
The woes of those that wish to keep _a Wake_.
Oh think! when Wombell gives his annual feasts,
Think of these “Bulls of Basan,” far from mild ones;
Such fierce tame beasts,
That nobody much cares to see the Wild ones!

Think of the Show woman, “what shows a Dwarf,”
Seeing a red Cow come
To swallow her Tom Thumb,
And forc’d with broom of birch to keep her off!

Think, too, of Messrs. Richardson and Co.,
When looking at their public private boxes,
To see in the back row
Three live sheep’s heads, a porker’s and an Ox’s!
Think of their Orchestra, when two horns come
Through, to accompany the double drum!

Or, in the midst of murder and remorses,
Just when the Ghost is certain,
A great rent in the curtain,
And enter two tall skeletons--of Horses!

Great philanthropics! pray urge these topics!
Upon the solemn Councils of the Nation,
Get a Bill soon, and give, some noon,
The Bulls, a Bull of Excommunication!

Let the old Fair have fair-play as its right,
And to each show and sight
Ye shall be treated with a Free List latitude;
To Richardson’s Stage Dramas,
Dio--and Cosmo--ramas,
Giants and Indians wild,
Dwarf, Sea Bear, and Fat Child,
And that most rare of Shows--a Show of gratitude!

TO MARY

AT NO. 1, NEWGATE.

_Favoured by Mr. Wontner._

O Mary, I believ’d you true,
And I was blest in so believing;
But till this hour I never knew--
That you were taken up for thieving!

Oh! when I snatch’d a tender kiss
Or some such trifle when I courted,
You said, indeed, that love was bliss,
But never owned you were transported!

But then to gaze on that fair face--
It would have been an unfair feeling,
To dream that you had pilfered lace--
And Flints had suffered from your stealing!

Or when my suit I first preferr’d,
To bring your coldness to repentance,
Before I hammer’d out a word,
How could I dream you’d heard a sentence!

Or when with all the warmth of youth
I strove to prove my love no fiction,
How could I guess I urged a truth
On one already past conviction!

How could I dream that ivory part,
Your hand--where I have look’d and linger’d,
Altho’ it stole away my heart,
Had been held up as one light-finger’d!

In melting verse your charms I drew,
The charms in which my muse delighted--
Alas! the lay I thought was new,
Spoke only what had been _indicted_!

Oh! when that form, a lovely one,
Hung on the neck its arms had flown to,
I little thought that you had run
A chance of hanging on your own too.

You said you pick’d me from the world,
My vanity it now must shock it--
And down at once my pride is hurl’d,
You’ve pick’d me--and you’ve pick’d a pocket.

Oh! when our love had got so far,
The bans were read by Dr. Daley,
Who asked if there was any _bar_--
Why did not some one shout “Old Bailey?”

But when you rob’d your flesh and bones
In that pure white that angel garb is,
Who could have thought you, Mary Jones,
Among the Joans that link with _Darbies_?

And when the parson came to say,
My goods were yours, if I had got any,
And you should honour and obey,
Who could have thought--“O Bay of Botany.”

But, oh,--the worst of all your slips
I did not till this day discover--
That down in Deptford’s prison ships,
Oh, Mary! you’ve a hulking lover!

No. II.

“Love, with a witness.”

He has shaved off his whiskers and blacken’d his brows,
Wears a patch and a wig of false hair,--
But it’s him--Oh it’s him!--we exchanged lovers’ vows,
When I lived up in Cavendish Square.

He had beautiful eyes, and his lips were the same,
And his voice was as soft as a flute--

Like a Lord or a Marquis he look’d when he came,
To make love in his master’s best suit.

If I lived for a thousand long years from my birth,
I shall never forget what he told;
How he lov’d me beyond the rich women of earth,
With their jewels and silver and gold!

When he kissed me and bade me adieu with a sigh,
By the light of the sweetest of moons,
Oh how little I dreamt I was bidding good-bye
To my Missis’s tea-pot and spoons!

No. III.

“I’d be a Parody.”--BAILEY.

We met--’twas in a mob--and I thought he had done me--
I felt--I could not feel--for no watch was upon me;
He ran--the night was cold--and his pace was unalter’d,
I too longed much to pelt--but my small-boned legs falter’d.
I wore my bran new boots--and unrivall’d their brightness,
They fit me to a hair--how I hated their tightness!
I call’d, but no one came, and my stride had a tether;
Oh _thou_ hast been the cause of this anguish, my leather!

And once again we met--and an old pal was near him,
He swore a something low--but ’twas no use to fear him;
I seized upon his arm, he was mine and mine only,
And stept--as he deserv’d--to cells wretched and lonely;
And there he will be tried--but I shall ne’er receive her,
The watch that went too sure for an artful deceiver;
The world may think me gay,--heart and feet ache together,
Oh _thou_ hast been the cause of this anguish, my leather.

TO FANNY.

“Gay being, born to flutter!”--SALE’S GLEE.

Is this your faith, then, Fanny!
What, to chat with every Dun?
I’m the one, then, but of many,
Not of many, but the _One_!

Last night you smil’d on all, Ma’am,
That appear’d in scarlet dress;
And your Regimental Ball, Ma’am,
Look’d a little like a _Mess_.

I thought that of the Sogers
(As the Scotch say) one might do;
And that I, slight Ensign Rogers,
Was the chosen man and true.

But ‘Sblood! your eye was busy
With that ragamuffin mob;--
Colonel Buddell--Colonel Dizzy--
And Lieutenant-Colonel Cobb.

General Joblin, General Jodkin,
Colonels--Kelly, Felly, with
Majors--Sturgeon, Truffle, Bodkin
And the Quarter-master Smith.

Major Powderum--Major Dowdrum--
Major Chowdrum--Major Bye--
Captain Tawney--Captain Fawney,
Captain Any-one--but I!

Deuce take it! when the regiment
You so praised, I only thought
That you lov’d it in abridgement,
But I now am better taught!

I went, as loving man goes,
To admire thee in quadrilles;
But Fan, you dance fandangoes
With just any fop that wills!

I went with notes before us,
On the lay of Love to touch;
But with all the Corps in chorus,
Oh! it is indeed too much!

You once--ere you contracted
For the Army--seem’d my own;
But now you laugh with all the Staff,
And I may sigh alone!

I know not how it chances,
When my passion ever dares,
But the warmer my advances,
Then the cooler are your airs.

I am, I don’t conceal it,
But I am a little hurt;
You’re a Fan, and I must feel it,
Fit for nothing but a _Flirt_!

I dreamt thy smiles of beauty
On myself alone did fall;
But alas! “Cosi Fan Tutti!”
It is thus, Fan, thus with all!

You have taken quite a mob in
Of new military flames;--
They would make a fine Round Robin
If I gave you all their names!

TO MR. MALTHUS.

My dear, do pull the bell,
And pull it well,
And send those noisy children all up stairs,
Now playing here like bears--
You George, and William, go into the grounds,
Charles, James, and Bob are there,--and take your string,
Drive horses, or fly kites, or anything,
You’re quite enough to play at hare and hounds,--
You little May, and Caroline, and Poll,
Take each your doll,
And go, my dears, into the two-back pair,
Your sister Margaret’s there--
Harriet and Grace, thank God, are both at school,
At far off Ponty Pool--
I want to read, but really can’t get on--
Let the four twins, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John,
Go--to their nursery--go--I never can
Enjoy my Malthus among such a clan!

Oh Mr. Malthus, I agree
In everything I read with thee!
The world’s too full, there is no doubt,
And wants a deal of thinning out,--
It’s plain--as plain as Harrow Steeple--
And I agree with some thus far,
Who say the Queen’s too popular,
That is,--she has too many people.

There are too many of all trades,
Too many bakers,
Too many every-thing-makers,
But not too many undertakers,--
Too many boys,--
Too many hobby-de-hoys,--
Too many girls, men, widows, wives and maids,--
There is a dreadful surplus to demolish,
And yet some Wrongheads,
With thick not long heads,
Poor Metaphysicians!
Sign petitions
Capital punishment to abolish;
And in the face of censuses such vast ones
New hospitals contrive,
For keeping life alive,
Laying first stones, the dolts! instead of last ones!
Others, again, in the same contrariety,
Deem that of all Humane Society
They really deserve thanks,
Because the two banks of the Serpentine,
By their design,
Are Saving Banks.
Oh! were it given but to me to weed
The human breed,
And root out here and there some cumbering elf,
I think I could go through it,
And really do it
With profit to the world and to myself,--
For instance, the unkind among the Editors,
My debtors, those I mean to say
Who cannot or who will not pay
And all my creditors.

These, for my own sake, I’d destroy;
But for the world’s, and every one’s,
I’d hoe up Mrs. G--’s two sons,
And Mrs. B--’s big little boy,
Call’d only by herself an “only joy.”
As Mr. Irving’s chapel’s not too full,
Himself alone I’d pull--
But for the peace of years that have to run,
I’d make the Lord Mayor’s a perpetual station,
And put a period to rotation,
By rooting up all Aldermen but one,--
These are but hints what good might thus be done!
But ah! I fear the public good
Is little by the public understood,--
For instance--if with flint, and steel, and tinder,
Great Swing, for once a philanthropic man
Proposed to throw a light upon thy plan,
No doubt some busy fool would hinder
His burning all the Foundling to a cinder.

Or, if the Lord Mayor, on an Easter Monday,
That wine and bun-day,
Proposed to poison all the little Blue-coats
Before they died by bit or sup,
Some meddling Marplot would blow up,
Just at the moment critical,
The economy political
Of Saving their fresh yellow plush and new coats.
Equally ’twould be undone,
Suppose the Bishop of London,
On that great day
In June or May,
When all the large small family of charity,
Brown, black, or carroty,
Walk in their dusty parish shoes
In too, too many two-and-twos,
To sing together till they scare the walls
Of old St. Paul’s,
Sitting in red, grey, green, blue, drab, and white,
Some say a gratifying sight,
Tho’ I think sad--but that’s a schism--
To witness so much pauperism--

Suppose, I say, the Bishop then, to make
In this poor overcrowded world more room,
Proposed to shake
Down that immense extinguisher, the dome--
Some humane Martin in the charity _Gal_-way
I fear would come and interfere,
Save beadle, brat, and overseer,
To walk back in their parish shoes,
In too, too many two-and-twos,
Islington--Wapping--or Pall Mall way!

Thus people hatch’d from goose’s egg,
Foolishly think a pest a plague,
And in its face their doors all shut,
On hinges oil’d with cajeput--
Drugging themselves with drams well spiced and cloven,
And turning pale as linen rags,
At hoisting up of yellow flags,
While you and I are crying “Orange Boven!”
Why should we let precautions so absorb us,
Or trouble shipping with a quarantine--
When if I understand the thing you mean,
We ought to _import_ the Cholera Morbus!

TO ST. SWITHIN.

“The rain it raineth every day.”

The Dawn is overcast, the morning low’rs,
On ev’ry window-frame hang beaded damps
Like rows of small illumination lamps,
To celebrate the Jubilee of Show’rs!
A constant sprinkle patters from all leaves,
The very Dryads are not dry, but soppers,
And from the Houses’ eaves
Tumble eaves-droppers.