When you start a careless song,
Not at grammar sticking,
Good to push the wine along,
I'm alive and kicking.
When a bigot, half-hours three, Spouts in canting gloom's tones, Be so kind as pray for me,
I'm as dead as tomb-stones. When in cloisters under ground, Built of stone or bricking, Orders of the Screw you found, I'm alive and kicking.
Bourbons back in France we see (Sure we don't much need 'em), Be so kind as pray for me,
I'm as dead as Freedom. Bess returns, and still our throats Finds us here a-slicking, Sitting free without our coatsI'm alive and kicking.
Forced to leave this company,
Bottle-wine and horn-ale,
Be so kind as pray for me,
I'm as dead as door-nail.
Pledging though a quick return,
Soon my anchor sticking
On the shore for which I yearn-I'm alive and kicking.
LIKE merry Momus, while the gods were quaffing,
I come to give an Eulogy on Laughing!
True, courtly Chesterfield, with critic zeal,
Asserts that laughing's vastly ungenteel!
The boist'rous shake, he says, distorts fine faces,
And robs each pretty feature of the graces!
But yet this paragon of perfect taste,
On other topics was not over-chaste ;
He, like the Pharisees, in this appears,
They ruin'd widows, but they made long prayers.
Tithe, anise, mint, they zealously affected :
But the law's weightier matters they neglected;
And while an insect strains their squeamish caul.
Down goes a monstrous camel-bunch and all!
Yet others, quite as sage, with warmth dispute
Man's risibles distinguish him from brute;
While instinct, reason, both in common own,
To laugh is man's prerogative alone!
Hail, rosy laughter, thou deserv'st the bays!
Come, with thy dimples, animate these lays,
Whilst universal peals attest thy praise.
Daughter of Joy! thro' thee we health attain.
When Esculapian recipes are vain.
Let sentimentalists ring in our ears
The tender joy of grief-the luxury of tears-
Heraclitus may whine and oh! and ah!
I like an honest, hearty, ha, ha, ha !
It makes the wheels of nature glibber play :
Dull care suppresses; smooths life's thorny way;
Propels the dancing current thro' each vein;
Braces the nerves; corroborates the brain;
Shakes every muscle, and throws off the spleen.
Old Homer makes you tenants of the skies,
His gods, love laughing as they did their eyes!
It kept them in good humour, hush'd their squabbles,
As forward children are appeased by baubles;
Even Jove the thund'rer dearly loved a laugh,
When, of fine nectar, he had ta'en a quaff!
It helps digestion when the feast runs high,
And dissipates the fumes of potent Burgundy.
But, in the main, tho' laughing I approve,
It is not every kind of laugh I love;
For many laughs e'en candour must condemn !
Some are too full of acid, some of phlegm ;
The loud horse-laugh (improperly so styled),
The idiot simper, like the slumb'ring child,
Th' affected laugh, to show a dimpled chin,
The sneer contemptuous, and broad vacant grin,
Are despicable all as Strephon's smile,
To show his ivory legions, rank and file.
The honest laugh, unstudied, unacquired,
By nature prompted, and true wit inspired,
Such as Quin felt, and Falstaff knew before,
When humour 'set the table on a roar;'
Alone deserves th' applauding muse's grace!
The rest is all contortion and grimace.
But you exclaim, 'Your Eulogy's too dry;
Leave dissertation and exemplify!
Prove by experiment, your maxim's true,
And what you praise so highly, makes us do.'
In truth, I hoped this was already done,
And Mirth and Momus had the laurel won!
Like honest Hodge, unhappy should I fail,
Who to a crowded audience told his tale,
And laugh'd and snigger'd all the while himself
To grace the story, as he thought, poor elf!
But not a single soul his suffrage gave-
While each long phiz was serious as the grave !
'Laugh! laugh!' cries Hodge, 'laugh loud! (no halfing)
I thought you all, ere this, would die with laughing!'
This did the feat; for tickled at the whim,
A burst of laughter, like the electric beam,
Shook all the audience-but it was at him!
Like Hodge, should every stratagem and wile
Thro' my long story not excite a smile,
I'll bear it with becoming modesty;
But should my feeble efforts move your glee,
Laugh, if you fairly can-but not at me!
THE APPLE DUMPLINGS AND A KING.
ONCE on a time, a Monarch, tired with hooping,
Whipping and spurring,
Happy in worrying
A poor, defenceless, harmless buck,
The horse and rider wet as muck,
From his high consequence and wisdom stooping,
Enter'd through curiosity, a cot,
Where sat a poor old woman with her pot.
The wrinkled, blear-eyed, good old granny,
In this same cot illumed by many a cranny,
Had finish'd apple dumplings for her pot:
In tempting row the naked dumplings lay,
When, lo! the Monarch, in his usual way,
Like lightning spoke, 'What's this? what's this? what? what?'
Then taking up a dumpling in his hand,
His eyes with admiration did expand
And oft did Majesty the dumpling grapple : ''Tis monstrous, monstrous hard indeed!' he cried: 'What makes it, pray, so hard?'—The dame replied, Low curtseying, 'Please your Majesty, the apple.'
'Very astonishing indeed !-strange thing!' Turning the dumpling round, rejoin'd the King. "Tis most extraordinary then, all this is-It beats Pinetti's conjuring all to piecesStrange I should never of a dumpling dreamBut, Goody, tell me where, where, where's the seam?
Sir, there's no seam,' quoth she; 'I never knew That folks did apple dumplings sew.'
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