Classic Poem

AN UNFINISHED MOCK-HEROIC POEM

. . . . . . . . .
Monopoly's Briarean hands
Had dragged her harrow o'er a hundred lands,
But, chief, the terrors of her Gorgon frown
Had scared Edina's faint and famished town.
Then Want, the griffin, champed with iron jaws
Our shuddering hearts and agonizing maws;
Chased from our plundered boards each glad regale
Of vermeil ham, brown beef, and buxom ale.
Ah me! no strepent goose at Christmas-tide
Hissed in the strangler's hand, and kicked and died!
No trembling jellies nor ambrosial pie
Regaled the liquorish mouth and longing eye.
Red sunk December's last dishonoured sun,
And the young Year's-Day passed without a bun!
. . . . . . .
Then sprung each patriot from his lowly den;
Even tailors would avenge the rights of men!
Huzzaing barbers swell the marching line,
Whose nice hands trim the human face divine;
Sweeps, in their panoply of soot revealed,
The glorious besom of destruction wield;
Their leathern aprons Crispian heroes stock
With tingling brick, huge tile, and massy rock!
. . . . . . . . .
March on, ye champions of the public weal!
Revenge or ruin! death or cheaper meal!
Fair salutary spot! where health inhales
Her freshest fountains and her purest gales,
I love thy homely name's familiar sound,
Thou green Parnassus of my native ground!
Haunt of my youth! while yet the poet's head
Peeped from yon high and heaven-aspiring shed,
O'erlooking far Edina's gilded vanes
And all her dusky wilderness of lanes,
What time, sublimely lodged, he mounted higher
Than Attic station with his Scotian lyre,
And, warm in Fancy's castle-building hour
Sung to the shelter of his skylight bower.
'Twas then, sweet hill! imagination drew
Thy winding walk some paradise in view;
Each white-robed nymph that sailed thy terrace round
Seemed like a goddess on Elysian ground.
Then spread Illusion, with her pencil warm,
Unearthly hues on every meaner form;
Wings on the grazing horse appeared to grow,
And Delphian woods to wave, and Helicon to flow!

Nor ceased my day-dream till the waning hours
Had shook fair fancy from her throne of flowers,
And o'er my heart emotions less divine
Imperious warned the esurient bard to dine.
Yet, when my bell its awful summons rung,
And menial Mary heard its iron tongue,
Not in plebeian prose I spoke aloud
When mortal wants the immortal spirit bowed.
. . . . . . . . .
Bring me the beef, the dulcet pudding bring;
Or fry the mudlark's odoriferous wing;
Or simmering greens with soft rotation turn,
Champed in the luscious treasure of the churn!
Then pour the brown ale, rich as ever ran
From Balder's horn or Odin's creamy can!
Blest in that honeyed draught, let none repine
For nectarous noyeau or ambrosial wine!
But, lest my waning wealth refuse to raise
So fair a feast in these degenerate days,
Take from this Splendid Shilling what may find
Some sweet refection for a sober mind —
The earth-born apple, vegetable grace
Of Erin's sons, a blunder-loving race! &c.