Original Size — Medium-Size
Swift across the court
Now the young Prince trips,
Sees around a sallyport
Hounds asleep in slips;
Huntsmen bold, returned from sport,
All prepared to blow a mort,
Snoring, horns to lips!
There they were becalmed, like ships
Lying with all sail outspread,
Lifeless on an ocean dead.
He draws near: there is no one to bar his way,
E’en the steeds are too sleepy to utter a “nay,”
While each single hound
In the pack, I ’ll be bound,
Is so sound there’s no chance of his making a sound,
Though not wanting in bark, since he’s closely bound round
With branches of creepers;—but then they are boughs
That are not of the sort to be followed by “wows.”
One huntsman would have an ugly fall
If he were not upheld by the palace wall,
Whence a stray branch of woodbine, in pitying scorn for him,
Has thrown out a trailer that’s winding his horn for him.
Another one, dropt
Off soundly, is propt
By a buttress that stands where his steed by chance stopt.
An odd pillow, I vow;
For you ’ll surely allow
That unless of some slumber your need is the utt’rest,
A sleep on a buttress seems anything but rest.
Two men in the doorway
Appear in a poor way,
So closely they’re bound
And wound
Around;
Their feet in fetters, their temples crowned
By the snake-like stems in their various inclinings,
That they must appear
To the Prince, I fear,
Sleeping partners in some branch department of Twining’s.
Past grooms as unawakened as sad sinners,
Past screws of hunters sound as Derby winners,
Past hounds as fast—no less—
As the express,
Through Bedfordshire into the land of Nod,
The young Prince trod,
And on through corridors and long arcades,
Halls wrapt in sombre shades,
And anterooms wherein had Echo slept
So long, it scarce awakened as he stept
Lightly and swiftly o’er
The dusty floor,
That sadly stood in need of being swept.
And ever and anon,
As he passed on,
In room, in hall, on stair,
Here, there, and everywhere,
He came on sleepers sleeping with the air
Of folks at active work by sleep o’ertaken,
Whom nothing could awaken;
Not even being—like physic with a sediment
That to its being swallowed’s an impediment—
Well shaken!
The housemaid, seemingly in fuss and fluster,
Tripping downstairs with feather-broom and duster,
Caught unaware
Upon the bottom stair
By sudden slumber, had quite failed to muster
Sufficient sense to rouse herself to any stir,
And so lay dozing up against the banister.
A lacquey, carrying upstairs the coal-scuttle,
Had fallen napping, and let fall the whole scuttle;
A giddy page
Was, with another youngster of his age,
Playing at fly-the-garter in, the hall
When both asleep did fall—
One
Going to take a run,
Straining to start (as when is trained a pup—any
Pointer or sporting dog—and there gets up any
Partridge or pheasant, in the slip he ’ll strain),
The other of the twain
Had fallen asleep while tucking in his twopenny!
Within their barracks several of the guards
Were quarrelling in their slumber over cards;
The butler in the cellar at the tap
Was taking such a nap,
He’d filled his silver flagon o’er and o’er,
And let the wine run all about the floor
Until the cask was drained and held no more.
But he’d continued after that to snore,
Until he was as dusted
And cobwebbed and encrusted
As rare old port, bottled in ‘Thirty-four.