The Lay of the Laborer
A spade! a rake! a hoe!
A pickaxe, or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will—
And here’s a ready hand
To ply the needful tool,
And skill’d enough, by lessons rough,
In Labor’s rugged school.
To hedge, or dig the ditch,
To lop or fell the tree,
To lay the swarth on the sultry field,
Or plough the stubborn lea;
The harvest stack to bind,
The wheaten rick to thatch,
And never fear in my pouch to find
The tinder or the match.
To a flaming barn or farm
My fancies never roam;
The fire I yearn to kindle and burn
Is on the hearth of Home;
Where children huddle and crouch
Through dark long winter days,
Where starving children huddle and crouch,
To see the cheerful rays,
A-glowing on the haggard cheek,
And not in the haggard’s blaze!
To Him who sends a drought
To parch the fields forlorn,
The rain to flood the meadows with mud,
The blight to blast the corn,
To Him I leave to guide
The bolt in its crooked path,
To strike the miser’s rick, and show
The skies blood-red with wrath.
A spade! a rake! a hoe!
A pickaxe, or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will—
The corn to thrash, or the hedge to plash,
The market-team to drive,
Or mend the fence by the cover side,
And leave the game alive.
Ay, only give me work,
And then you need not fear
That I shall snare his Worship’s hare,
Or kill his Grace’s deer;
Break into his lordship’s house,
To steal the plate so rich;
Or leave the yeoman that had a purse
To welter in a ditch.
Wherever Nature needs,
Wherever Labor calls,
No job I’ll shirk of the hardest work,
To shun the workhouse walls;
Where savage laws begrudge
The pauper babe its breath,
And doom a wife to a widow’s life,
Before her partner’s death.
My only claim is this,
With labor stiff and stark,
By lawful turn, my living to earn,
Between the light and dark;
My daily bread, and nightly bed,
My bacon, and drop of beer—
But all from the hand that holds the land,
And none from the overseer!
No parish money, or loaf,
No pauper badges for me,
A son of the soil, by right of toil
Entitled to my fee.
No alms I ask, give me my task:
Here are the arm, the leg,
The strength, the sinews of a Man,
To work, and not to beg.
Still one of Adam’s heirs,
Though doom’d by chance of birth
To dress so mean, and to eat the lean
Instead of the fat of the earth;
To make such humble meals
As honest labor can,
A bone and a crust, with a grace to God,
And little thanks to man!
A spade! a rake! a hoe!
A pickaxe, or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will—
Whatever the tool to ply,
Here is a willing drudge,
With muscle and limb, and woe to him
Who does their pay begrudge!
Who every weekly score
Docks labor’s little mite,
Bestows on the poor at the temple door,
But robb’d them over night.
The very shilling he hoped to save,
As health and morals fail,
Shall visit me in the new Bastille,
The Spital, or the Gaol!
STANZAS.19
Farewell, Life! My senses swim,
And the world is growing dim;
Thronging shadows cloud the light,
Like the advent of the night,—
Colder, colder, colder still,
Upward steals a vapor chill—
Strong the earthy odor grows—
I smell the mould above the rose!
Welcome, Life! the Spirit strives!
Strength returns, and hope revives;
Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn
Fly like shadows at the morn,—
O’er the earth there comes a bloom—
Sunny light for sullen gloom,
Warm perfume for vapor cold—
smell the rose above the mould!
February 1845.
ODE TO MR. GRAHAM,20
THE AERONAUT.
“Up with me!—up with me into the sky!”
Wordsworth—on a Lark.
I.
Dear Graham, whilst the busy crowd,
The vain, the wealthy, and the proud,
Their meaner flights pursue,
Let us cast off the foolish ties
That bind us to the earth, and rise
And take a bird’s-eye view!—
II.
A few more whiffs of my segar
And then, in Fancy’s airy car,
Have with thee for the skies:—
How oft this fragrant smoke upcurl’d
Hath borne me from this little world,
And all that in it lies!—
III.
Away!—away!—the bubble fills—
Farewell to earth and all its hills!—
We seem to cut the wind!—
So high we mount, so swift we go,
The chimney tops are far below,
The Eagle’s left behind!—
IV.
Ah me! my brain begins to swim!—
The world is growing rather dim;
The steeples and the trees—
My wife is getting very small!
I cannot see my babe at all!—
The Dollond, if you please!—
V.
Do, Graham, let me have a quiz;
Lord! what a Lilliput it is.
That little world of Mogg’s!—
Are those the London Docks?—that channel,
The mighty Thames?—a proper kennel
For that small Isle of Dogs!—
VI.
What is that seeming tea-urn there?
That fairy dome, St. Paul’s!—I swear,
Wren must have been a Wren!—
And that small stripe?—it cannot be
The City Road!—Good lack! to see
The little ways of men!
VII.
Little, indeed!—my eyeballs ache
To find a turnpike.—I must take
Their tolls upon my trust!—
And where is mortal labor gone?
Look, Graham, for a little stone
Mac Adamiz’d to dust!
VIII.
Look at the horses!—less than flies!—
Oh, what a waste it was of sighs
To wish to be a Mayor!
What is the honor?—none at all,
One’s honor must be very small
For such a civic chair!—
IX.
And there’s Guildhall!—’tis far aloof—
Methinks, I fancy through the roof
Its little guardian Gogs,
Like penny dolls—a tiny show!—
Well,—I must say they’re rul’d below
By very little logs!—
X.
Oh, Graham! how the upper air
Alters the standards of compare;
One of our silken flags
Would cover London all about—
Nay, then—let’s even empty out
Another brace of bags!
XI.
Now for a glass of bright champagne
Above the clouds!—Come, let us drain
A bumper as we go!—
But hold!—for God’s sake do not cant
The cork away—unless you want
To brain your friends below.
XII.
Think! what a mob of little men
Are crawling just within our ken,
Like mites upon a cheese!—
Pshaw!—how the foolish sight rebukes
Ambitious thoughts!—can there be Dukes
Of Gloster such as these!—
XIII.
Oh! what is glory?—what is fame?
Hark to the little mob’s acclaim,
’Tis nothing but a hum!—
A few near gnats would trump as loud
As all the shouting of a crowd
That has so far to come!—
XIV.
Well—they are wise that choose the near,
A few small buzzards in the ear,
To organs ages hence!—
Ah me! how distance touches all;
It makes the true look rather small,
But murders poor pretence
XV.
“The world recedes!—it disappears!
Heav’n opens on my eyes—my ears
With buzzing noises ring!”—
A fig for Southey’s Laureat lore!”—
What’s Rogers here?—Who cares for Moore
That hears the Angels sing!—”
XVI.
A fig for earth, and all its minions!—
We are above the world’s opinions,
Graham! we’ll have our own!—
Look what a vantage height we’ve got!—
Now—do you think Sir Walter Scott
Is such a Great Unknown?
XVII.
Speak up!—or hath he hid his name
To crawl thro’ “subways” unto fame,
Like Williams of Cornhill?—
Speak up, my lad!—when men run small
We’ll show what’s little in them all,
Receive it how they will!—
XVIII.
Think now of Irving!—shall he preach
The princes down,—shall he impeach
The potent and the rich,
Merely on ethic stilts,—and I
Not moralize at two mile high
The true didactic pitch!
XIX.
Come:—what d’ye think of Jeffrey, sir?
Is Gifford such a Gulliver
In Lilliput’s Review,
That like Colossus he should stride
Certain small brazen inches wide
For poets to pass through?
XX.
Look down! the world is but a spot.
Now say—Is Blackwood’s low or not,
For all the Scottish tone?
It shall not weigh us here—not where
The sandy burden’s lost in air—
Our lading—where is’t flown?
XXI.
Now,—like you Croly’s verse indeed—
In heaven—where one cannot read
The “Warren” on a wall?
What think you here of that man’s fame?
Tho’ Jerdan magnified his name,
To me ’tis very small!
XXII.
And, truly, is there such a spell
In those three letters, L. E. L.,
To witch a world with song?
On clouds the Byron did not sit,
Yet dar’d on Shakspeare’s head to spit,
And say the world was wrong!
XXIII.
And shall not we? Let’s think aloud!
Thus being couch’d upon a cloud,
Graham, we’ll have our eyes!
We felt the great when we were less,
But we’ll retort on littleness
Now we are in the skies.
XXIV.
O Graham, Graham, how I blame
The bastard blush,—the petty shame,
That used to fret me quite,—
The little sores I cover’d then,
No sores on earth, nor sorrows when
The world is out of sight!
XXV.
My name is Tims.—I am the man
That North’s unseen diminish’d clan
So scurvily abused!
I am the very P. A. Z.
The London’s Lion’s small pin’s head
So often hath refused!
XXVI.
Campbell—(you cannot see him here)—
Hath scorn’d my lays:—do his appear
Such great eggs from the sky?—
And Longman, and his lengthy Co.
Long, only, in a little Row,
Have thrust my poems by!
XXVII.
What else?—I’m poor, and much beset
With damn’d small duns—that is—in debt
Some grains of golden dust!
But only worth, above, is worth.—
What’s all the credit of the earth?
An inch of cloth on trust?
XXVIII.
What’s Rothschild here, that wealthy man!
Nay, worlds of wealth?—Oh, if you can
Spy out,—the Golden Ball!
Sure as we rose, all money sank:
What’s gold or silver now?—the Bank
Is gone—the ‘Change and all!
XXIX.
What’s all the ground-rent of the globe?—
Oh, Graham, it would worry Job
To hear its landlords prate!
But after this survey, I think
I’ll ne’er be bullied more, nor shrink
From men of large estate!
XXX.
And less, still less, will I submit
To poor mean acres’ worth of wit—
I that have heaven’s span—
I that like Shakspeare’s self may dream
Beyond the very clouds, and seem
An Universal Man!
XXXI.
Mark, Graham, mark those gorgeous crowds!
Like Birds of Paradise the clouds
Are winging on the wind!
But what is grander than their range?
More lovely than their sunset change?—
The free creative mind!
XXXII.
Well! the Adults’ School’s in the air!
The greatest men are lesson’d there
As well as the Lessee!
Oh could Earth’s Ellistons thus small
Behold the greatest stage of all,
How humbled they would be!
XXXIII.
“Oh would some Power the giftie gie ’em,
To see themselves as others see ’em,”
’Twould much abate their fuss!
If they could think that from the iskies
They are as little in our eyes
As they can think of us!
XXXIV.
Of us! are we gone out of sight?
Lessen’d! diminish’d! vanish’d quite!
Lost to the tiny town!
Beyond the Eagle’s ken—the grope
Of Dollond’s longest telescope!
Graham! we’re going down!
XXXV.
Ah me! I’ve touch’d a string that opes
The airy valve!—the gas elopes—
Down goes our bright Balloon!—
Farewell the skies! the clouds! I smell
The lower world! Graham, farewell,
Man of the silken moon!
XXXVI.
The earth is close! the City nears—
Like a burnt paper it appears,
Studded with tiny sparks!
Methinks I hear the distant rout
Of coaches rumbling all about—
We’re close above the Parks!
XXXVII.
I hear the watchmen on their beats,
Hawking the hour about the streets.
Lord! what a cruel jar
It is upon the earth to light!
Well—there’s the finish of our flight!
I’ve smoked my last segar!
A FRIENDLY ADDRESS TO MRS. FRY IN NEWGATE.21
“Sermons in stones.”—As You Like It.
“Out! out! damned spot!”
—Macbeth.
I.
I like you, Mrs. Fry! I like your name!
It speaks the very warmth you feel in pressing
In daily act round Charity’s great flame—
I like the crisp Browne way you have of dressing,
Good Mrs. Fry! I like the placid claim
You make to Christianity,—professing
Love, and good works—of course you buy of Barton,
Beside the young Fry’s bookseller, Friend Darton!
II.
I like, good Mrs. Fry, your brethren mute—
Those serious, solemn gentlemen that sport—
I should have said, that wear, the sober suit
Shap’d like a court dress—but for heaven’s court.
I like your sisters too,—sweet Rachel’s fruit—
Protestant nuns! I like their stiff support
Of virtue—and I like to see them clad
With such a difference—just like good from bad!
III.
I like the sober colors—not the wet;
Those gaudy manufactures of the rainbow—
Green, orange, crimson, purple, violet—
In which the fair, the flirting, and the vain, go—
The others are a chaste, severer set,
In which the good, the pious, and the plain, go—
They’re moral standards, to know Christians by—
In short, they are your colors, Mrs. Fry!
IV.
As for the naughty tinges of the prism—
Crimson’s the cruel uniform of war—
Blue—hue of brimstone! minds no catechism;
And green is young and gay—not noted for
Goodness, or gravity, or quietism,
Till it is sadden’d down to tea-green, or
Olive—and purple’s giv’n to wine, I guess;
And yellow is a convict by its dress!
V.
They’re all the devil’s liveries, that men
And women wear in servitude to sin—
But how will they come off, poor motleys, when
Sin’s wages are paid down, and they stand in
The Evil presence? You and I know, then,
How all the party colors will begin
To part—the Pittite hues will sadden there,
Whereas the Foxite shades will all show fair!
VI.
Witness their goodly labors one by one!
Russet makes garments for the needy poor—
Dove-color preaches love to all—and dun
Calls every day at Charity’s street door—
Brown studies scripture, and bids woman shun
All gaudy furnishing—olive doth pour
Oil into wounds: and drab and slate supply
Scholar and book in Newgate, Mrs. Fry!
VII.
Well! Heaven forbid that I should discommend
The gratis, charitable, jail-endeavor!
When all persuasions in your praises blend—
The Methodist’s creed and cry are, Fry forever!
No—I will be your friend—and, like a friend,
Point out your very worst defect—Nay, never
Start at that word! But I must ask you why
You keep your school in Newgate, Mrs. Fry?
VIII.
Top well I know the price our mother Eve
Paid for her schooling: but must all her daughters
Commit a petty larceny, and thieve—
Pay down a crime for “entrance” to your “quarters”?
Your classes may increase, but I must grieve
Over your pupils at their bread and waters!
Oh, tho’ it cost you rent—(and rooms run high)
Keep your school out of Newgate, Mrs. Fry!
IX.
O save the vulgar soul before it’s spoil’d!
Set up your mounted sign without the gate—
And there inform the mind before ’tis soil’d!
’Tis sorry writing on a greasy slate!
Nay, if you would not have your labors foil’d,
Take it inclining tow’rds a virtuous state,
Not prostrate and laid flat—else, woman meek!
The upright pencil will but hop and shriek!
X.
Ah, who can tell how hard it is to drain
The evil spirit from the heart it preys in,—
To bring sobriety to life again,
Choked with the vile Anacreontic raisin,—
To wash Black Betty when her black’s ingrain,—
To stick a moral lacquer on Moll Brazen,
Of Suky Tawdry’s habits to deprive her;
To tame the wild-fowl-ways of Jenny Diver!
XI.
Ah, who can tell how hard it is to teach
Miss Nancy Dawson on her bed of straw—
To make Long Sal sew up the endless breach
She made in manners—to write heaven’s own law
On hearts of granite.—Nay, how hard to preach,
In cells, that are not memory’s—to draw
The moral thread, thro’ the immoral eye
Of blunt Whitechapel natures, Mrs. Fry!
XII.
In vain you teach them baby-work within:
’Tis but a clumsy botchery of crime;
’Tis but a tedious darning of old sin—
Come out yourself, and stitch up souls in time—
It is too late for scouring to begin
When virtue’s ravell’d out, when all the prime
Is worn away, and nothing sound remains;
You’ll fret the fabric out before the stains!
XIII.
I like your chocolate, good Mistress Fry!
I like your cookery in every way;
I like your shrove-tide service and supply;
I like to hear your sweet Pandeans play;
I like the pity in your full-brimm’d eye;
I like your carriage, and your silken gray,
Your dove-like habits, and your silent preaching;
But I don’t like your Newgatory teaching.
XIV.
Come out of Newgate, Mrs. Fry! Repair
Abroad, and find your pupils in the streets.
O, come abroad into the wholesome air,
And take your moral place, before Sin seats
Her wicked self in the Professor’s chair.
Suppose some morals raw! the true receipt’s
To dress them in the pan, but do not try
To cook them in the fire, good Mrs. Fry!
XV.
Put on your decent bonnet, and come out!
Good lack! the ancients did not set up schools
In jail—but at the Porch! hinting, no doubt,
That Vice should have a lesson in the rules
Before ’twas whipt by law.—O come about,
Good Mrs. Fry! and set up forms and stools
All down the Old Bailey, and thro’ Newgate Street,
But not in Mr. Wontner’s proper seat!
XVI.
Teach Lady Barrymore, if, teaching, you
That peerless Peeress can absolve from dolor;
Teach her it is not virtue to pursue
Ruin of blue, or any other color;
Teach her it is not Virtue’s crown to rue,
Month after month, the unpaid drunken dollar;
Teach her that “flooring Charleys” is a game
Unworthy one that bears a Christian name.
XVII.
O come and teach our children—that ar’n’t ours—
That heaven’s straight pathway is a narrow way,
Not Broad St. Giles’s, where fierce Sin devours
Children, like Time—or rather they both prey
On youth together—meanwhile Newgate low’rs
Ev’n like a black cloud at the close of day,
To shut them out from any more blue sky:
Think of these hopeless wretches, Mrs. Fry!
XVIII.
You are not nice—go into their retreats,
And make them Quakers, if you will.—’Twere best
They wore straight collars, and their shirts sans pleats;
That they had hats with brims,—that they were drest
In garbs without lappels—than shame the streets
With so much raggedness.—You may invest
Much cash this way—but it will cost its price,
To give a good, round, real cheque to Vice!
XIX.
In brief,—Oh teach the child its moral rote,
Not in the way from which ’twill not depart,—
But out—out—out! Oh, bid it walk remote!
And if the skies are clos’d against the smart,
Ev’n let him wear the single-breasted coat,
For that ensureth singleness of heart.—
Do what you will, his every want supply,
Keep him—but out of Newgate, Mrs. Fry!
ODE TO RICHARD MARTIN, ESQ.,22
M.P. FOR GALWAY.
“Martin in this has proved himself a very good man!”
—Boxiana.
I.
How many sing of wars,
Of Greek and Trojan jars—
The butcheries of men!
The Muse hath a “Perpetual Ruby Pen!”
Dabbling with heroes and the blood they spill;
But no one sings the man
That, like a pelican,
Nourishes Pity with his tender Bill!
II.
Thou Wilberforce of hacks!
Of whites as well as blacks,
Pyebald and dapple gray,
Chestnut and bay—
No poet’s eulogy thy name adorns!
But oxen, from the fens,
Sheep—in their pens,
Praise thee, and red cows with their winding horns!
Thou art sung on brutal pipes!
Drovers may curse thee,
Knackers asperse thee,
And sly M.P.’s bestow their cruel wipes;
But the old horse neighs thee,
And zebras praise thee,—
Asses, I mean—that have as many stripes!
III.
Hast thou not taught the Drover to forbear,
In Smithfield’s muddy, murderous, vile environ,—
Staying his lifted bludgeon in the air!
Bullocks don’t wear
Oxide of iron!
The cruel Jarvy thou hast summon’d oft,
Enforcing mercy on the coarse Yahoo,
That thought his horse the courser of the two—
Whilst Swift smiled down aloft!—
O worthy pair! for this, when ye inhabit
Bodies of birds—(if so the spirit shifts
From flesh to feather)—when the clown uplifts
His hands against the sparrow’s nest, to grab it,—
He shall not harm the MARTINS and the Swifts!
IV.
Ah! when Dean Swift was quick, how he enhanc’d
The horse!—and humbled biped man like Plato!
But now he’s dead, the charger is mischanc’d—
Gone backward in the world—and not advanc’d,—
Remember Cato!
Swift was the horse’s champion—not the King’s,
Whom Southey sings,
Mounted on Pegasus—would he were thrown!
He’ll wear that ancient hackney to the bone,
Like a mere clothes-horse airing royal things!
Ah well-a-day! the ancients did not use
Their steeds so cruelly!—let it debar men
From wanton rowelling and whip’s abuse—
Look at the ancients’ Muse!
Look at their Carmen!
V.
O, Martin I how thine eyes—
That one would think had put aside its lashes,—
That can’t bear gashes
Thro’ any horse’s side, must ache to spy
That horrid window fronting Fetter-lane,—
For there’s a nag the crows have pick’d for victual,
Or some man painted in a bloody vein—
Gods! is there no Horse-spital!
That such raw shows must sicken the humane!
Sure Mr. Whittle
Loves thee but little,
To let that poor horse linger in his pane!
VI.
O build a Brookes’s Theatre for horses!
O wipe away the national reproach—
And find a decent Vulture for their corses!
And in thy funeral track
Four sorry steeds shall follow in each coach!
Steeds that confess “the luxury of wo!”
True mourning steeds, in no extempore black,
And many a wretched hack
Shall sorrow for thee,—sore with kick and blow
And bloody gash—it is the Indian knack—
(Save that the savage is his own tormentor)—
Banting shall weep too in his sable scarf—
The biped woe the quadruped shall enter,
And Man and Horse go half and half,
As if their griefs met in a common Centaur!
ODE TO THE GREAT UNKNOWN.23
“O breathe not his name!”—Moore.
I.
Thou Great Unknown!
I do not mean Eternity, nor Death,
That vast incog!
For I suppose thou hast a living breath,
Howbeit we know not from whose lungs ’tis blown,
Thou man of fog!
Parent of many children—child of none!
Nobody’s son!
Nobody’s daughter—but a parent still!
Still but an ostrich parent of a batch
Of orphan eggs,—left to the world to hatch
Superlative Nil!
A vox and nothing more,—yet not Vauxhall;
A head in papers, yet without a curl!
Not the Invisible Girl!
No hand—but a handwriting on a wall—
A popular nonentity,
Still call’d the same,—without identity!
A lark, heard out of sight,—
A nothing shin’d upon,—invisibly bright,
“Dark with excess of light!”
Constable’s literary John-a-nokes—
The real Scottish wizard—and not which,
Nobody—in a niche;
Every one’s hoax!
Maybe Sir Walter Scott—
Perhaps not!
Why dost thou so conceal and puzzle curious folks?
II.
Thou,—whom the second-sighted never saw,
The Master Fiction of fictitious history!
Chief Nong-tong-paw!
No mister in the world—and yet all mystery!
The “tricksy spirit” of a Scotch Cock Lane—
A novel Junius puzzling the world’s brain—
A man of Magic—yet no talisman!
A man of clair obscure—not he o’ the moon!
A star—at noon.
A non-descriptus in a caravan,
A private—of no corps—a northern light
In a dark lantern,—Bogie in a crape—
A figure—but no shape;
A vizor—and no knight;
The real abstract hero of the age;
The staple Stranger of the stage;
A Some One made in every man’s presumption,
Frankenstein’s monster—but instinct with gumption;
Another strange state captive in the north,
Constable-guarded in an iron mask—
Still let me ask,
Hast thou no silver platter,
No door-plate, or no card—or some such matter,
To scrawl a name upon, and then cast forth?
III.
Thou Scottish Barmecide, feeding the hunger
Of Curiosity with airy gammon!
Thou mystery-monger,
Dealing it out like middle cut of salmon,
That people buy and can’t make head or tail of it;
(Howbeit that puzzle never hurts the sale of it;)
Thou chief of authors mystic and abstractical,
That lay their proper bodies on the shelf—
Keeping thyself so truly to thyself,
Thou Zimmerman made practical!
Thou secret fountain of a Scottish style,
That, like the Nile,
Hideth its source wherever it is bred,
But still keeps disemboguing
(Not disembroguing)
Thro’ such broad sandy mouths without a head!
Thou disembodied author—not yet dead,—
The whole world’s literary Absentee!
Ah! wherefore hast thou fled,
Thou learned Nemo—wise to a degree,
Anonymous LL.D.!
IV.
Thou nameless captain of the nameless gang
That do—and inquests cannot say who did it!
Wert thou at Mrs. Donatty’s death-pang?
Hast thou made gravy of Weare’s watch—or hid it?
Hast thou a Blue-Beard chamber? Heaven forbid it!
I should be very loth to see thee hang!
I hope thou hast an alibi well plann’d,
An innocent, altho’ an ink-black hand.
Tho’ that hast newly turn’d thy private bolt on
The curiosity of all invaders—
I hope thou art merely closeted with Colton,
Who knows a little of the Holy Land,
Writing thy next new novel—The Crusaders!
V.
Perhaps thou wert even born
To be Unknown.—Perhaps hung, some foggy morn,
At Captain Coram’s charitable wicket,
Pinn’d to a ticket
That Fate had made illegible, foreseeing
The future great unmentionable being.—
Perhaps thou hast ridden
A scholar poor on St. Augustine’s Back,
Like Chatterton, and found a dusty pack
Of Rowley novels in an old chest hidden;
A little hoard of clever simulation,
That took the town—and Constable has bidden
Some hundred pounds for a continuation—
To keep and clothe thee in genteel starvation.
VI.
I like thy Waverley—first of thy breeding;
I like its modest “sixty years ago,”
As if it was not meant for ages’ reading.
I don’t like Ivanhoe,
Tho’ Dymoke does—it makes him think of clattering
In iron overalls before the king
Secure from battering, to ladies flattering,
Tuning, his challenge to the gauntlet’s ring—
Oh better far than all that anvil clang
It was to hear thee touch the famous string
Of Robin Hood’s tough bow and make it twang,
Rousing him up, all verdant, with his clan,
Like Sagittarian Pan!
VII.
I like Guy Mannering—but not that sham son
Of Brown:—I like that literary Sampson,
Nine-tenths a Dyer, with a smack of Porson.
I like Dirk Hatteraick, that rough sea Orson
That slew the Gauger;
And Dandie Dinmont, like old Ursa Major;
And Merrilies, young Bertram’s old defender,
That Scottish Witch of Endor,
That doom’d thy fame. She was the Witch, I take it,
To tell a great man’s fortune—or to make it!
VIII.
I like thy Antiquary. With his fit on,
He makes me think of Mr. Britton,
I like thy Antiquary. With Ins fit on,
It makes me think
Who has—or had—within his garden wall,
A miniature Stone Henge, so very small
That sparrows find it difficult to sit on;
And Dousterwivel, like Poyais’ M’Gregor;
And Edie Ochiltree, that old Blue Beggar,
Painted so cleverly,
I think thou surely knowest Mrs. Beverly!
I like thy Barber—him that fir’d the Beacon—
But that’s a tender subject now to speak on!
IX.
I like long-arm’d Rob Roy.—His very charms
Fashion’d him for renown!—In sad sincerity,
The man that robs or writes must have long arms,
If he’s to hand his deeds down to posterity!
Witness Miss Biffin’s posthumous prosperity,
Her poor brown crumpled mummy (nothing more)
Bearing the name she bore,
A thing Time’s tooth is tempted to destroy!
But Roys can never die—why else, in verity,
Is Paris echoing with “Vive le Roy”!
Aye, Rob shall live again, and deathless Di
Vernon, of course, shall often live again—
Whilst there’s a stone in Newgate, or a chain,
Who can pass by
Nor feel the Thief’s in prison and at hand?
There be Old Bailey Jarvies on the stand!
X.
I like thy Landlord’s Tales!—I like that Idol
Of love and Lammermoor—the blue-eyed maid
That led to church the mounted cavalcade,
And then pull’d up with such a bloody bridal!
Throwing equestrian Hymen on his haunches—
like the family (not silver) branches
That hold the tapers
To light the serious legend of Montrose.—
I like M’Aulay’s second-sighted vapors,
As if he could not walk or talk alone,
Without the devil—or the Great Unknown,—
Dalgetty is the dearest of Ducrows!
XI.
I like St. Leonard’s Lily—drench’d with dew!
I like thy Vision of the Covenanters,
That bloody-minded Grahame shot and slew.
I like the battle lost and won;
The hurly-burlys bravely done,
The warlike gallop and the warlike canters!
I like that girded chieftain of the ranters,
Ready to preach down heathens, or to grapple,
With one eye on his sword,
And one upon the Word,—
How he would cram the Caledonian Chapel!
I like stern Claverhouse, though he cloth dapple
His raven steed with blood of many a corse—
I like dear Mrs. Headrigg, that unravels
Her texts of scripture on a trotting horse—
She is so like Rae Wilson when he travels!
XII.
I like thy Kenilworth—but I’m not going
To take a Retrospective Re-Review
Of all thy dainty novels—merely showing
The old familiar faces of a few,
The question to renew,
How thou canst leave such deeds without a name,
Forego the unclaim’d Dividends of fame,
Forego the smiles of literary houris—
Mid-Lothian’s trump, and Fife’s shrill note of praise,
And all the Carse of Gowrie’s,
When thou might’st have thy statue in Cromarty—
Or see thy image on Italian trays,
Betwixt Queen Caroline and Buonaparté,
Be painted by the Titian of R.A’s,
Or vie in signboards with the Royal Guelph!
P’rhaps have thy bust set cheek by jowl with Homer’s,
P’rhaps send out plaster proxies of thyself
To other Englands with Australian roamers—
Mayhap, in Literary Owhyhee
Displace the native wooden gods, or be
The china-Lar of a Canadian shelf!
XIII.
It is not modesty that bids thee hide—
She never wastes her blushes out of sight:
It is not to invite
The world’s decision, for thy fame is tried,—
And thy fair deeds are scatter’d far and wide,
Even royal heads are with thy readers reckon’d,—
From men in trencher caps to trencher scholars
In crimson collars,
And learned serjeants in the Forty-Second!
Whither by land or sea art thou not beckon’d?
Mayhap exported from the Frith of Forth,
Defying distance and its dim control;
Perhaps read about Stromness, and reckon’d worth
A brace of Miltons for capacious soul—
Perhaps studied in the whalers, further north,
And set above ten Shakspeares near the pole!
XIV.
Oh, when thou writest by Aladdin’s lamp,
With such a giant genius at command,
Forever at thy stamp,
To fill thy treasury from Fairy Land,
When haply thou might’st ask the pearly hand
Of some great British Vizier’s eldest daughter,
Tho’ princes sought her,
And lead her in procession hymeneal,
Oh, why dost thou remain a Beau Ideal!
Why stay, a ghost, on the Lethean Wharf,
Envelop’d in Scotch mist and gloomy fogs?
Why, but because thou art some puny Dwarf,
Some hopeless Imp, like Biquet with the Tuft,
Fearing, for all thy wit, to be rebuff’d,
Or bullied by our great reviewing Gogs?
XV.
What in this masquing age
Maketh Unknowns so many and so shy?
What but the critic’s page?
One hath a cast, he hides from the world’s eye;
Another hath a wen,—he won’t show where;
A third has sandy hair,
A hunch upon his back, or legs awry,
Things for a vile reviewer to espy!
Another hath a mangel-wurzel nose,—
Finally, this is dimpled,
Like a pale crumpet face, or that is pimpled,
Things for a monthly critic to expose—
Nay, what is thy own case—that being small,
Thou choosest to be nobody at all!
XVI.
Well, thou art prudent, with such puny bones—
E’en like Elshender, the mysterious elf,
That shadowy revelation of thyself—
To build thee a small hut of haunted stones—
For certainly the first pernicious man
That ever saw thee, would quickly draw thee
In some vile literary caravan—
Shown for a shilling
Would be thy killing,
Think of Crachami’s miserable span!
No tinier frame the tiny spark could dwell in
Than there it fell in—
But when she felt herself a show, she tried
To shrink from the world’s eye, poor dwarf! and died!
XVII.
O since it was thy fortune to be born
A dwarf on some Scotch Inch, and then to flinch
From all the Gog-like jostle of great men,
Still with thy small crow pen
Amuse and charm thy lonely hours forlorn—
Still Scottish story daintily adorn,
Be still a shade—and when this age is fled,
When we poor sons and daughters of reality
Are in our graves forgotten and quite dead,
And Time destroys our mottoes of morality—
The lithographic hand of Old Mortality
Shall still restore thy emblem on the stone,
A featureless death’s head,
And rob Oblivion ev’n of the Unknown!