From that dire dungeon, place of doom,
Of execution, too, and tomb,
Paced forth the judges three;
Sorrow it were and shame, to tell
The butcher-work that there befell,
When they had glided from the cell
Of sin and misery.
An hundred winding steps convey
That conclave to the upper day;
But, ere they breathed the fresher air,
They hear the shriekings of despair,
And many a stifled groan.
With speed their upward way they take,
Such speed as age and fear can make,
And crossed themselves for terror's sake,
As hurrying, tottering on,
Even in the vesper's heavenly tone,
They seemed to hear a dying groan,
And bade the passing knell to toll
For welfare of a parting soul.
ENEATH a laurel, two fair streams between,
At early sunrise of the opening year,
A milk-white fawn upon the meadow green,
Of gold its either horn, I saw appear.
So mild, yet so majestic, was its mien,
I left, to follow, all my labors here,
As miners after treasure, in the keen
Desire of new, forget the old to fear.
"Let none impede," so round its fair neck run
The words in diamond and topaz writ,
"My lord to give me liberty saw fit."
And now the sun his noontide height had won
When I, with weary though unsated view,
Fell in the stream-and so my vision flew.
IN once, bore
IN Thibet once there reigned, I'm told,
A little lama, one year old,
Raised to the throne that realm to bless,
Just when his little Holiness
Had cut-as near as can be reckoned-
Some say his first tooth, some his second.
Chronologers and nurses vary,
Which proves historians should be wary.
We only know the important truth,
His majesty had cut a tooth!
And much his subjects were enchanted,
As well all lamas' subjects may be,
And would have given their heads, if wanted,
To make teetotums for the baby.
Throned as he was by right divine—
What lawyers call Jure Divino,
Meaning a right to yours, and mine,
And everybody's goods and rhino,-
Of course, his faithful subjects' purses
Were ready with their aids and succors;
Nothing was seen but pensioned nurses,
And the land groaned with bibs and tuckers.
Oh! had there been a Hume or Bennett
Then sitting in the Thibet senate,
Ye gods! what room for long debates
Upon the nursery estimates!
But no; if Thibet had M. P.'s,
They were far better bred than these;
Nor gave the slightest opposition,
During the monarch's whole dentition.
But short this calm; for, just when he
Had reached th' alarming age of three,
When royal natures, and no doubt
Those of all noble breasts break out,
The lama, who till then was quiet,
Showed symptoms of a taste for riot;
And, ripe for mischief, early, late,
Without regard for church or state,
Made free with whosoe'er came nigh:
Tweaked the lord chancellors by the nose,
Turned all the judges' wigs awry,
And trod on the old generals' toes;
Pelted the bishops with hot buns,
Rode cock-horse on the city maces
And shot from little terrible guns
Hard peas into his subjects' faces.
In short, such wicked pranks he played
And grew so mischievous-now, bless him!—
That his chief nurse, with even the aid
Of an archbishop, was afraid,
When in these moods to comb or dress him!
Nay, even the persons most inclined
Through thick and thin for kings to stickle,
Thought him (if they'd but speak their mind,
Which they did not) an odious pickle.
Well, some patriot lords, who saw the length
To which things went, combined their strength
And penned a manly, plain and free
Remonstrance to the nursery;
Protesting it made them almost sick to think of;
That they and theirs stood by the king
Throughout his measles and his chincough,
When others, thinking him consumptive.
Had ratted to the heir presumptive!
But still, though kings much admiring,
They saw, with shame and grief of soul,
There was no longer now the wise
And constitutional control
Of birch before their ruler's eyes.
But that, of late, such pranks and tricks.
And freaks occurred the whole day long,
As all, but men with bishoprics,
Allowed, in even a king, were wrong.
Wherefore it was they humbly prayed
That honorable nursery,
That such reforms be henceforth made,
As all good men desired to see.
In other words (lest they might seem
Too tedious), as the gentlest scheme
For putting all such pranks to rest,
And in its bud the mischief nipping,
They ventured humbly to suggest
His majesty should have a whipping!
When this was read no Congreve rocket,
Discharged into the Gallic trenches,
E'er equaled the tremendous shock it
Produced upon the nursery benches.
The bishops, who, of course, had votes
By right of age and petticoats,
Were first and foremost in the fuss.
What, whip a lama! suffer birch
To touch his famous person? Infamous! Deistical! assailing thus
The fundamentals of the church!
No, no; such patriot plans as these
(So help them heaven-and their sees)
They held to be rank blasphemies."
The alarm thus given by these and other
Grave ladies of the nursery side,
Spread through the land till such a pother,
Such party squabbles, far and wide,
Never in history's page had been
Recorded, as were then between the
Whippers and Non-whippers seen ;
Till, things arriving at a state
Which gave some fears of revolution,
The patriot lords' advice, though late,
Was put at last in execution.
The parliament of Thibet met;
The little lama, called before it,
Did then and there his whipping get;
And (as the nursery gazette
Assures us) like a hero bore it.
And though, 'mong Thibet tories, some
Lament that royal martyrdom,
Yet to the example of that prince,
So much is Thibet's land a debtor,
That her long line of lamas, since,
Have all behaved themselves much better.
S when with downcast eyes we muse and brood,
And ebb into a former life, or seem
To lapse far back in a confusèd dream
To states of mystical similitude;
If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair,
Ever the wonder waxeth more and more
So that we say, "All this has been before,
All this hath been, I know not when or where."
So, friend, when first I looked upon your face,
Our thought gave answer, each to each, so true,
Opposed mirrors each reflecting each-
Although I knew not in what time or place,
Methought that I had often met with you,
And each had lived in the other's mind and speech.
At night ar
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