WE, though a little word of two short letters,
A most important word is, and ambiguous;
Sometimes it means those personages mighty,
The speaker, active, and the passive hearer,
Taken apart, distinguished from mankind.
Sometimes it means the author and his reader,
Pair never without honor to be mentioned,
By me, at least, who in myself comprise,
Not seldom, both the units of this dual,
Writing what no one reads except myself.
In olden time it was a royal word,
This little We, and, ungrammatical,
Took on it to express the Lord's anointed,
The DEI-GRATIA DUX, the great bell-wedder.
Those were the glorious days of pigmy We,
Too happy to last long, for minor folk,
Following as minor folk are apt to do
The bad example set them by their betters,
Weed and re-weed and weed again, audacious
And at nought setting decency no less
Than grammar. Whereat kings and queens, incensed
And with disgust filled, cast the plural off
And left it there, to be thenceforth for ever
The representative pronominal
Of editors, reviewers, costermongers,
Tailors and grocers, and hoc genus omne
Of varlets, and to unsophisticated,
Plain, simple I, in royal sulk, returned;
And I, this moment, our most gracious Queen
Victoria writes herself; I, to her lords
And gentlemen in parliament assembled,
Herself addresses. Long may she so write,
Long so address herself God save the Queen!
Prays I, in duty bound and in good grammar.
ROSAMOND, RAThgar Road, April 28, 1859.
PITY thee, Prometheus; wise and wretched.
That wisdom 's wretchedness, I know too late;
But art thou happy, Io, without wisdom?
Alas! th' unhappiest of mankind is Io.
More than thou pitiest me I pity thee
Who neither wisdom hast nor happiness.
Elél-eleú! elél- elél-eleú!
Now, Jove, thy worst; not even thy worst can máke me
More wretched than, with all thy favor, Io.
KILMASHOGUE MOUNTAIN (CO. DUBLIN), June 23, 1859.
ALONG WITH THE QUARTERLY AND EDINBURGH REVIEWS OF MY POEMS, TO A FRIEND WHO HAD WARNED ME NOT TO SEND MY POEMS TO
"PEARLS before swine, which turn again, and rẻnd you!"
Too late! too late! and, lo! the swine,
I send you.
Rip up their paunches and you 'll find, within,
Semi-digested garbage, thick and thin,
And broken pearls. Alas! the pearls are mine,
Crunched with their garbage by these beastly swine.
ROSAMOND, May 31, 1859.
WHETHER Truth is the child of Time,
I'll not stop to inquire,
But this I know, that if she is,
She's daughter of a liar,
For, ever since the world was made,
We 've nothing had but sorrow,
Though Time has promised, every day,
To bring us joy, the morrow.
ROSAMOND, Sept. 23, 1859.
ALL the morning long I have studied,
It 's evening now and I'll dine ;
Pen and ink were made for the morning,
For the evening God gave us wine.
The day, it is full of trouble,
And worries a man to death;
But the evening I 'll spend in pleasure,
As long as there 's in me a breath.
In the morning I 'll tottle accounts up,
In the morning I 'll make my will,
In the evening hurra for the tankard!
My heirs, they may pay the bill.
"LAY by your poem nine long years," says Horace, "Then take it out, and, with remorseless pen,
Blot every word of which you disapprove."
But I say: take your poem out of Limbo
At two years' end, blot every second word,
And put, for every word you blot, two better.
ROSAMOND, Sept. 30, 1859.
INSCRIPTION FOR THE BANK OF IRELAND,
FORMERLY THE IRISH PARLIAMENT HOUSE.
BEHOLD the House of Parliament a bank,
And cash for good bills given where, in old time,
Bad bills were in exchange passed for hard cash!
ROSAMOND, Febr. 15, 1860.
THE proud son of a vicious, heartless father,
The váin son of a weak, indulgent mother,
The tyrant husband of a blameless wife,
The sentimental sire of one unhappy
Legitimate daughter of how many more,
Unhappy chance-sown, he knows not, nor cares
See where before the world, for admiration,
With front unblushing, George Lord Byron stands
And wins of the whole world the admiration,
Pugilist, fencer, brawler, spendthrift, rake,
Lover of bull-dogs, friend of ribald Little,
Bully of Harrow school, ere quite fourteen,
Champion, at thirty-six, of rebel Greece,
All his life long, bad poet and worse man.
Hide, hide your heads, ye virtuous, learned, and wise;
Follow Astraea, Muses, to the skies.
ROSAMOND, Sept. 12, 1859,
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