I'll want not then the yellow haze Thou shed'st so faint by day All earth in jewels then will blaze And shame thy feeble ray- Ten thousand times ten thousand dyes In silv'ry robes will meet my eyes And lift my soul from earth, None but a God of wond'rous power "Of mercy dropping like the shower," Could give such splendor birth.
My eyes are aching in this room To watch thee quivering, die, But yet a thought doth cheer the gloom 'Tis better you than I- My lips that tell thy dying lot Of melting grease all hissing hot Of this at least may boast Some other candle lights my way Adown to death, unless the day Receive my parting ghost.
Stay, light, while yet a little grease Burns in thy brazen hearse Stay but a moment if you please And let me see my purse- "Tis empty all-no-not a crown I cannot chase a sixpence down, Pshaw!-go then with a pun,
Thy fate is but the fate of Greece Nought cheers her night of dark decease But Liberty's bright Sun.
THE SPRING S.
I want a mould in which to run my lead
You've read dear B- the Cantos of Don Juan I'll take their stanza for what's in my head, And sketch a picture which shall be a true one;
I'm filled with Sulphur, white, blue, grey and red, To drink such oceans, surely must undo one- If, therefore, I should seem a spiteful devil Excuse me-brimstone makes me thus uncivil.
I'm at the Springs, beyond the Alleghany, The burning sun is scorching us like stubble, The dust declares the weather is not rainy
And decent people have a world of trouble; I'm sick of Springs all save old Hippocrene, That had no sulphur, but with rhymes did bubble, Now bubbling rhymes are difficult to stop up So take them, dearest B., just as they hop up.
We have assembled here a crowd of folks From bay of Mexico to Pass'maquoddy, The welkin rings with laughter, caused by jokes, By julep sometimes and sometimes by toddy. Alas! to me, all seems like one great hoax,
A monstrous cheat imposed on every body- But for the fashion, we should shun these waters Ye fathers, mothers, brothers, sons and daughters!
Great men are plenty here, as well as little, The high and low, plebeians and patricians, Small fry and great! "of fish a pretty kettle" Here mingle Congressmen, grand politicians! With men whose only business is to whittle- Here's one, long deemed the greatest of magicians, And people whisper, that sulphureous station Is just the place for dev'lish incantation.
"Tis time such calumnies should have an end It's like his sable majesty rebuking sin ; Or devil, undertaking broken legs to mend- The game is but the game of out and in, To this pole-star alone, all needles tend,
For this, all panic cries and clamorous din, And things have lately had an end so tragical That "non-committal" should expire with "magical."
How like a polypus, Springs multiply!-
Sweet, Salt and White! the Blue, the Red, the Grey! Like the weird Sisters in Macbeth, they cry And bid us, "mingle, mingle while me may" Aye, blue spirits and grey, poor fools! we fly To curse our folly at no distant day,
For when returned to long abandon'd homes In ghastly form our hideous demon comes.
But then we have such charming promenades! A gulf-stream, vast, in which are floating seen Bewhisker'd fellows, and well bishop'd maids And withered beldames of a stately mien. Then come old men, with bald and shining heads Which look like barbers' blocks alive, between- Oh 'tis a scene it makes one smile to scan In spite of all our sympathy with man.
God forbid that I should laugh at wrinkles, I am so wrinkled and so old myself,
But when your eye with rheum gets red and twinkles, Just lay yourself aside upon the shelf,
And think upon the straggling hair that sprinkles Your head, and do not for all Rothschild's pelf Your sinciput in public thus exhibit
So like a skeleton upon a gibbet.
A word of bishops-tell me if you please
What means the term?-my head is very thick, A bishop's one who owns a diocese,
In other words, he has a bishoprick.
Now prithee, what can ladies want with these?
And wherefore stick them where we see them stick, Much more do they resemble that high hump A dromedary carries on his rump.
That great philosopher, my Lord Monboddo,
Held men were monkies once, both male and female, That they continued by decree of God, so,
Till civilization "dock'd th' estate in tail."
The women doubtless will exclaim, oh lud no! But once their gowns were made with monstrous trail, And now they show, by these enormous tumors, That having tails is one of their fond humors.
Ah! ha! I've stumbled on the secret hidden In bishops, perched upon each lady's back, Most women have, for ages, been priest-ridden. The seat of honor too is a woolsack
Their backs, by sacks, should argal, be bestridden And thus you see I've got upon the track: Stop then, until I make a memorandum That here's quod erat demonstrandum.
Do ladies think to laugh so much is pretty? Their faces gleam with everlasting light- The beaux must now be either vastly witty Or else their stock of brains must be so slight That blunders half convulse each screaming Kitty And she is forced to show her ivory white, And throw her body into such contortions From witnessing dull Witling's sad abortions.
Since I have mention'd women here so freely I'll handle now the Epigastric-
Why on such subjects should our mouths be mealy Why dont some "Pulpit drum ecclesiastic" Send forth anathema of thund'ring peal, eh! Against that fashion, cruel and fantastic, Of tightly squeezing up the poor abdomen, Till busts are like inverted cones, in women.
A truce with gibes against the charming fair For, after all, they're ev'ry way, delightful- Now for those mouths all covered up with hair Can any thing on earth be half so frightful? Were I a despot they should dangle in mid air The running noose I would, with all my might, pull, Or banish them to herd with bearded goats Which wear such dirty patches on their throats.
But that which beats bobtail and makes one stare. That which all other fooleries doth bang, Is the vile foppery of gumming down the hair Till youth looks grimmer than Ourang Outang— A further proof that once, men monkies were, And to their "hurdies" next a tail will hang, And if tis true, old maids lead apes about in hell "Twill be but what is done, in this world, by a belle.
Nevertheless, there's something quite amusing About these Sulphur Springs, in what one sees Eight hundred people constantly abusing
waters-table-servants-flies and flees; And yet the whole affair's of their own choosing
All swarming here, as swarms a swarm of beesAnd never was there such a set of gluttons Devouring every year three thousand muttons.
A fellow has dyspepsia-fui quorum,
(I choose to have the Latin changed to please me,) Chotanker like, I take my morning jorum,
And then expect, vain hope! the spring to ease me; Next down my throat the buckwheat cakes I pour'em And then, of course, tremendous colics seize me, The Doctor's called-one of Jack Hornbook's scholars-I swallow pills-he swallows twenty dollars.
A man whose face is yellow as a pumpkin, For calomel has gone off with his liver, With no more prudence than a country bumpkin Consumes more gravy than would make a river, And feeds as freely as a Tony Lumpkin,
Then straightway has an Indian sweat or shiver, And yet by gas-the sulphurated hydrogen- He hopes to get,-ye gods!-upon his legs agen.
A friend complained about his nervous system That Cassius like he "could not sleep o'nights"- He hoped that Sulphur water would assist him And set his weak and shattered nerves to rights-
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