Lunar Stanzas
Night saw the crew like pedlers with their packs
Altho’ it were too dear to pay for eggs;
Walk crank along with coffin on their backs
While in their arms they bow their weary legs.
And yet ’t was strange, and scarce can one suppose
That a brown buzzard-fly should steal and wear
His white jean breeches and black woollen hose,
But thence that flies have souls is very clear.
But, Holy Father! what shall save the soul,
When cobblers ask three dollars for their shoes?
When cooks their biscuits with a shot-tower roll,
And farmers rake their hay-cocks with their hoes.
Yet, ’twere profuse to see for pendant light,
A tea-pot dangle in a lady’s ear;
And ’twere indelicate, although she might
Swallow two whales and yet the moon shine clear.
But what to me are woven clouds, or what,
If dames from spiders learn to warp their looms?
If coal-black ghosts turn soldiers for the State,
With wooden eyes, and lightning-rods for plumes?
Oh! too, too shocking! barbarous, savage taste!
To eat one’s mother ere itself was born!
To gripe the tall town-steeple by the waste,
And scoop it out to be his drinking-horn.
No more: no more! I’m sick and dead and gone;
Boxed in a coffin, stifled six feet deep;
Thorns, fat and fearless, prick my skin and bone,
And revel o’er me, like a soulless sheep.
Henry Coggswell Knight, 1815.