Family Poetry. R. Harris Barham
Zooks! I must woo the Muse to-day,
Though line before I never wrote!
“On what occasion?” do you say?
Our Dick has got a long-tail’d coat!!
Not a coatee, which soldiers wear
Button’d up high about the throat,
But easy, flowing, debonair,
In short a CIVIL long-tail’d coat.
A smarter you’ll not find in town,
Cut by Nugee, that snip of note;
A very quiet olive brown
’s the color of Dick’s long-tail’d coat.
Gay jackets clothe the stately Pole,
The proud Hungarian, and the Croat,
Yet Esterhazy, on the whole
Looks best when in a long-tail’d coat
Lord Byron most admired, we know,
The Albanian dress, or Suliote,
But then he died some years ago,
And never saw Dick’s long-tail’d coat;
Or past all doubt the poet’s theme
Had never been the “White Capote,”
Had he once view’d in Fancy’s dream,
The glories of Dick’s long-tail’d coat!
We also know on Highland kilt
Poor dear Glengarry used to dote,
And had esteem’d it actual guilt
I’ “the Gael” to wear a long-tail’d coat!
No wonder ’twould his eyes annoy,
Monkbarns himself would never quote
“Sir Robert Sibbald,” “Gordon,” “Ray,”
Or “Stukely” for a long-tail’d coat.
Jackets may do to ride or race,
Or row in, when one’s in a boat,
But in the boudoir, sure, for grace
There’s nothing like Dick’s long-tail’d cost,
Of course in climbing up a tree,
On terra-firma, or afloat,
To mount the giddy topmast, he
Would doff awhile his long-tail’d coat.
What makes you simper, then, and sneer?
From out your own eye pull the mote!
A PRETTY thing for you to jeer—
Haven’t YOU, too, got a long-tail’d coat?
Oh! “Dick’s scarce old enough,” you mean.
Why, though too young to give a note,
Or make a will, yet, sure Fifteen
’s a ripe age for a long-tail’d coat.
What! would you have him sport a chin
Like Colonel Stanhope, or that goat
O’ German Mahon, ere begin
To figure in a long-tail’d coat?
Suppose he goes to France—can he
Sit down at any table d’ hote,
With any sort of decency,
Unless he’s got a long-tail’d coat?
Why Louis Philippe, Royal Cit,
There soon may be a sans culotte,
And Nugent’s self may then admit
The advantage of a long-tail’d coat.
Things are not now as when, of yore,
In tower encircled by a moat,
The lion-hearted chieftain wore
A corselet for a long-tail’d coat;
Then ample mail his form embraced,
Not like a weasel or a stoat,
“Cribb’d and confined” about the waist,
And pinch’d in like Dick’s long-tail’d coat
With beamy spear or biting ax,
To right and left he thrust and smote—
Ah! what a change! no sinewy thwacks
Fall from a modern long-tail’d coati
More changes still! now, well-a-day!
A few cant phrases learned by rote,
Each beardless booby spouts away,
A Solon, in a long-tail’d coat!
Prates of the “March of Intellect”—
“The Schoolmaster.” A PATRIOTE
So noble, who could e’er suspect
Had just put on a long-tail’d coat?
Alack! alack! that every thick-
Skull’d lad must find an antidote
For England’s woes, because, like Dick,
He has put on a long-tail’d coat!
But lo! my rhyme’s begun to fail,
Nor can I longer time devote;
Thus rhyme and time cut short the TALE,
The long tale of Dick’s long-tail’d coat.