Of Yorkshire cakes and crumpets prime,
And letters only just in time!
The Muffin-boy has passed away,
The Postman gone-and I must pay,
For down below Deaf Mary dwells,
And does not hear those Evening Bells.
And so 'twill be when she is gone,
That tuneful peal will still ring on,
And other maids with timely yells
Forget to stay those Evening Bells.
'Tis pleasant, when we've absent friends, Sometimes to hob and nob 'em
With Memory's glass-at such a pass
Remember me at Cobham!
Have pigs you will, and sometimes kill,
But if you sigh and sob 'em,
And cannot eat your home-grown meat,
Remember me at Cobham!
Of hen and cock, you'll have a stock,
And death will oft unthrob 'em,-
A country chick is good to pick—
Remember me at Cobham!
Some orchard-trees of course you'll lease,
And boys will sometimes rob 'em,
A friend (you know) before a foe-
Remember me at Cobham!
You'll sometimes have wax-lighted rooms,
And friends of course to mob 'em,
Should you be short of such a sort,
Remember me at Cobham!
ON THE CELEBRATION OF PEACE.
AND is it thus ye welcome Peace!
From Mouths of forty-pounding Bores?
O cease, exploding Cannons, cease!
Lest Peace, affrighted, shun our shores!
Not so the quiet Queen should come;
But like a Nurse to still our Fears,
With Shoes of List, demurely dumb,
And Wool or Cotton in her Ears!
She asks for no triumphal Arch;
No Steeples for their ropy Tongues;
Down, Drumsticks, down, She needs no March,
Or blasted Trumps from brazen Lungs.
She wants no noise of mobbing Throats
To tell that She is drawing nigh:
Why this Parade of scarlet Coats,
When War has closed his bloodshot Eye?
Returning to Domestic Loves,
When War has ceased with all its Ills, Captains should come like sucking Doves, With Olive Branches in their Bills.
No need there is of vulgar Shout,
Bells, Cannons, Trumpets, Fife, and Drum,
And Soldiers marching all about,
To let us know that Peace is come.
O mild should be the Signs and meek,
Sweet Peace's Advent to proclaim!
Silence her noiseless Foot should speak,
And Echo should repeat the same.
Lo! where the Soldier walks, alas!
With Scars received on foreign Grounds;
Shall we consume in coloured Glass
The Oil that should be poured in Wounds?
The bleeding Gaps of War to close,
Will whizzing Rocket-Flight avail?
Will Squibs enliven Orphans' Woes?
Or Crackers cheer the Widow's Tale ?
"A little learning is a dangerous thing."-POPE.
O HEAVY day! O day of woe!
To misery a poster,
Why was I ever farrowed-why
Not spitted for a roaster?
In this world, pigs, as well as men,
Must dance to fortune's fiddlings,
But must I give the classics up,
For barley-meal and middlings?
Of what avail that I could spell
And read, just like my betters,
If I must come to this at last,
To litters, not to letters?
O, why are pigs made scholars of? It baffles my discerning,
What griskins, fry, and chitterlings, Can have to do with learning.
Alas! my learning once drew cash,
But public fame's unstable,
So I must turn a pig again,
And fatten for the table.
To leave my literary line
My eyes get red and leaky;
But Giblett doesn't want me blue,
But red and white, and streaky.
Old Mullins used to cultivate
My learning like a gard'ner;
But Giblett only thinks of lard,
And not of Doctor Lardner!
He does not care about my brain
The value of two coppers,
All that he thinks about my head
Is, how I'm off for choppers.
Of all my literary kin
A farewell must be taken,
Good-by to the poetic Hogg!
The philosophic Bacon!
Day after day my lessons fade,
My intellect gets muddy;
A trough I have, and not a desk,
A sty-and not a study!
Another little month, and then
My progress ends, like Bunyan's; The seven sages that I loved Will be chopped up with onions!
Then over head and ears in brine
They'll souse me like a salmon,
My mathematics turned to brawn,
My logic into gammon.
My Hebrew will all retrograde,
Now I'm put up to fatten :
My Greek it will all go to grease;
The Dogs will have my Latin!
Farewell to Oxford !-and to Bliss!
To Milman, Crowe, and Glossop,—
I now must be content with chats,
Instead of learned gossip!
Farewell to "Town!" farewell to "Gown!"
I've quite outgrown the latter,
Instead of Trencher-cap my head
Will soon be in a platter!
( why did I at Brazen-Nose
Rout up the roots of knowledge?
A butcher that can't read will kill
A pig that's been to college!
For sorrow I could stick myself,
But conscience is a clasher;
A thing that would be rash in man,
In me would be a rasher!
One thing I ask-when I am dead,
And past the Stygian ditches-
And that is, let my schoolmaster
Have one of my two flitches:
'Twas he who taught my letters so
I ne'er mistook or missed 'em, Simply by ringing at the nose, According to Bell's system.
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