A little fairy comes at night,
Her eyes are blue, her hair is brown,
With silver spots upon her wings,
And from the moon she flutters down.
She has a little silver wand,
And when a good child goes to bed
She waves her wand from right to left,
And makes a circle round its head.
And then it dreams of pleasant things,
Of fountains filled with fairy fish,
And trees that bear delicious fruit,
And bow their branches at a wish;
Of arbors filled with dainty scents
From lovely flowers that never fade;
Bright flies that glitter in the sun,
And glow-worms shining in the shade.
And talking birds with gifted tongues,
For singing songs and telling tales,
And pretty dwarfs to show the way
Through fairy hills and fairy dales.
But when a bad child goes to bed,
From left to right she weaves her rings,
And then it dreams all through the night
Of only ugly horrid things!
Then lions come with glaring eyes,
And tigers growl, a dreadful noise,
And ogres draw their cruel knives,
To shed the blood of girls and boys.
Then stormy waves rush on to drown,
Or raging flames come scorching round,
Fierce dragons hover in the air,
And serpents crawl along the ground.
Then wicked children wake and weep,
And wish the long black gloom away;
But good ones love the dark, and find
The night as pleasant as the day.
TO HENRIETTA,[37]
ON HER DEPARTURE FOR CALAIS.
When little people go abroad, wherever they may roam,
They will not just be treated as they used to be at home;
So take a few promiscuous hints, to warn you in advance,
Of how a little English girl will perhaps be served in
France.
Of course you will be Frenchified; and first, it's my belief,
They'll dress you in their foreign style as à-la-mode as
beef,
With a little row of beehives, as a border to your frock,
And a pair of frilly trousers, like a little bantam cock.
But first they'll seize your bundle (if you have one) in a
crack,
And tie it with a tape by way of bustle on your back;
And make your waist so high or low, your shape will be a
riddle,
For anyhow you'll never have your middle in the middle.
Your little English sandals for a while will hold together,
But woe betide you when the stones have worn away the
leather;
For they'll poke your little pettitoes (and there will be a
hobble!)
In such a pair of shoes as none but carpenters can cobble!
What next?—to fill your head with French to match the
native girls,
In scraps of Galignani they'll screw up your little
curls;
And they'll take their nouns and verbs, and some bits of
verse and prose,
And pour them in your ears that you may spout them through
your nose.
You'll have to learn a chou is quite another sort of
thing
To that you put your foot in; that a belle is not to
ring;
That a corne is not the nubble that brings trouble to
your toes;
Nor peut-être a potato, as some Irish folks
suppose.
No, No, they have no Murphies there, for supper or for lunch,
But you may get in course of time a pomme de terre to
munch,
With which, as you perforce must do as Calais folks are
doing,
You'll maybe have to gobble up the frog that went a wooing!
But pray at meals, remember this, the French are so polite,
No matter what you eat or drink, "whatever is, is right!"
So when you're told at dinner-time that some delicious stew
Is cat instead of rabbit, you must answer "Tant
mi—eux!"
For little folks who go abroad, wherever they may roam,
They cannot just be treated as they used to be at home;
So take a few promiscuous hints, to warn you in advance,
Of how a little English girl will perhaps be served in
France!
"Sweet Memory, wafted by thy gentle gale,
Oft up the stream of time I turn my sail."—ROGERS.
Come, my Crony, let's think upon far-away days,
And lift up a little Oblivion's veil;
Let's consider the past with a lingering gaze,
Like a peacock whose eyes are inclined to his tail.
Aye, come, let us turn our attention behind,
Like those critics whose heads are so heavy, I fear,
That they cannot keep up with the march of the mind,
And so turn face about for reviewing the rear.
Looking over Time's crupper and over his tail,
Oh, what ages and pages there are to revise!
And as farther our back-searching glances prevail,
Like the emmets, "how little we are in our eyes!"
What a sweet pretty innocent, half-a-yard long,
On a dimity lap of true nursery make!
I can fancy I hear the old lullaby song
That was meant to compose me, but kept me awake.
Methinks I still suffer the infantine throes,
When my flesh was a cushion for any long pin—
Whilst they patted my body to comfort my woes,
Oh! how little they dreamt they were driving them in!
Infant sorrows are strong—infant pleasures as
weak—
But no grief was allow'd to indulge in its note;
Did you ever attempt a small "bubble and squeak,"
Through the Dalby's Carminative down in your throat?
Did you ever go up to the roof with a bounce?
Did you ever come down to the floor with the same?
Oh! I can't but agree with bath ends, and pronounce
"Heads or tails," with a child, an unpleasantish game!
Then an urchin—I see myself urchin indeed—
With a smooth Sunday face for a mother's delight;
Why should weeks have an end?—I am sure there was need
Of a Sabbath, to follow each Saturday night.
Was your face ever sent to the housemaid to scrub?
Have you ever felt huckaback soften'd with sand?
Had you ever your nose towell'd up to a snub,
And your eyes knuckled out with the back of the hand?
Then a school-boy—my tailor was nothing in fault,
For an urchin will grow to a lad by degrees,—
But how well I remember that "pepper-and-salt"
That was down to the elbows, and up to the knees!
What a figure it cut when as Norval I spoke!
With a lanky right leg duly planted before;
Whilst I told of the chief that was kill'd by my stroke,
And extended my arms as "the arms that he wore!"
Next a Lover—Oh! say, were you ever in love?
With a lady too cold—and your bosom too hot?
Have you bow'd to a shoe-tie, and knelt to a glove,
Like a beau that desired to be tied in a knot?
With the Bride all in white, and your body in blue,
Did you walk up the aisle—the genteelest of men?
When I think of that beautiful vision anew,
Oh! I seem but the biffin of what I was then!
I am withered and worn by a premature care,
And wrinkles confess the decline of my days;
Old Time's busy hand has made free with my hair,
And I'm seeking to hide it—by writing for bays!
Of all our pains, since man was curst,
I mean of body, not the mental,
To name the worst, among the worst,
The dental sure is transcendental;
Some bit of masticating bone,
That ought to help to clear a shelf,
But lets its proper work alone,
And only seems to gnaw itself;
In fact, of any grave attack
On victual there is little danger,
'Tis so like coming to the rack,
As well as going to the manger.
Old Hunks—it seemed a fit retort
Of justice on his grinding ways—
Possessed a grinder of the sort,
That troubled all his latter days.
The best of friends fall out, and so
His teeth had done some years ago,
Save some old stumps with ragged root,
And they took turn about to shoot;
If he drank any chilly liquor,
They made it quite a point to throb;
But if he warmed it on the hob,
Why then they only twitched the quicker.
One tooth—I wonder such a tooth
Had never killed him in his youth—
One tooth he had with many fangs,
That shot at once as many pangs,
It had a universal sting;
One touch of that ecstatic stump
Could jerk his limbs and make him jump,
Just like a puppet on a string;
And what was worse than all, it had
A way of making others bad.
There is, as many know, a knack,
With certain farming undertakers,
And this same tooth pursued their track,
By adding achers still to achers!
One way there is, that has been judged
A certain cure, but Hunks was loth
To pay the fee, and quite begrudged
To lose his tooth and money both;
In fact, a dentist and the wheel
Of Fortune are a kindred cast,
For after all is drawn, you feel
It's paying for a blank at last;
So Hunks went on from week to week,
And kept his torment in his cheek;
Oh! how it sometimes set him rocking,
With that perpetual gnaw—gnaw—gnaw,
His moans and groans were truly shocking,
And loud,—altho' he held his jaw.
Many a tug he gave his gum
And tooth, but still it would not come,
Tho' tied to string by some firm thing,
He could not draw it, do his best,
By draw'rs, altho' he tried a chest.
At last, but after much debating,
He joined a score of mouths in waiting,
Like his, to have their troubles out.
Sad sight it was to look about
At twenty faces making faces,
With many a rampant trick and antic,
For all were very horrid cases,
And made their owners nearly frantic.
A little wicket now and then
Took one of these unhappy men,
And out again the victim rushed,
While eyes and mouth together gushed;
At last arrived our hero's turn,
Who plunged his hands in both his pockets,
And down he sat, prepared to learn
How teeth are charmed to quit their sockets.
Those who have felt such operations,
Alone can guess the sort of ache,
When his old tooth began to break
The thread of old associations;
It touched a string in every part,
It had so many tender ties;
One cord seemed wrenching at his heart,
And two were tugging at his eyes;
"Bone of his bone," he felt, of course,
As husbands do in such divorce;
At last the fangs gave way a little,
Hunks gave his head a backward jerk,
And lo! the cause of all this work,
Went—where it used to send his victual!
The monstrous pain of this proceeding
Had not so numbed his miser wit,
But in this slip he saw a hit
To save, at least, his purse from bleeding;
So when the dentist sought his fees,
Quoth Hunks, "Let's finish, if you please,"
"How, finish! why, it's out!"—"Oh no—
'Tis you are out, to argue so;
I'm none of your before-hand tippers.
My tooth is in my head no doubt,
But, as you say you pulled it out,
Of course it's there—between your nippers,"
"Zounds, sir! d'ye think I'd sell the truth
To get a fee? no, wretch, I scorn it!"
But Hunks still asked to see the tooth,
And swore by gum! he had not drawn it.
His end obtained, he took his leave,
A secret chuckle in his sleeve;
The joke was worthy to produce one,
To think, by favor of his wit
How well a dentist had been bit
By one old stump, and that a loose one!
The thing was worth a laugh, but mirth
Is still the frailest thing on earth:
Alas! how often when a joke
Seems in our sleeve, and safe enough,
There comes some unexpected stroke
And hangs a weeper on the cuff!
Hunks had not whistled half a mile,
When, planted right against a stile,
There stood his foeman, Mike Mahoney,
A vagrant reaper, Irish born,
That helped to reap our miser's corn,
But had not helped to reap his money,
A fact that Hunks remembered quickly;
His whistle all at once was quelled,
And when he saw how Michael held
His sickle, he felt rather sickly.
Nine souls in ten, with half his fright,
Would soon have paid the bill at sight,
But misers (let observers watch it)
Will never part with their delight
Till well demanded by a hatchet—
They live hard—and they die to match it.
Thus Hunks prepared for Mike's attacking,
Resolved not yet to pay the debt,
But let him take it out in hacking;
However, Mike began to stickle
In words before he used the sickle;
But mercy was not long attendant:
From words at last he took to blows,
And aimed a cut at Hunks's nose,
That made it what some folks are not—
A member very independent.
Heaven knows how far this cruel trick
Might still have led, but for a tramper
That came in danger's very nick,
To put Mahoney to the scamper.
But still compassion met a damper;
There lay the severed nose, alas!
Beside the daisies on the grass,
"Wee, crimson-tipt" as well as they,
According to the poet's lay:
And there stood Hunks, no sight for laughter.
Away went Hodge to get assistance,
With nose in hand, which Hunks ran after,
But somewhat at unusual distance.
In many a little country place
It is a very common case
To have but one residing doctor,
Whose practice rather seems to be
No practice, but a rule of three,
Physician—surgeon—drug-decoctor;
Thus Hunks was forced to go once more
Where he had ta'en his to t' before.
His mere name made the learned man hot,—
"What! Hunks again within my door!
I'll pull his nose"; quoth Hunks, "You cannot."
The doctor looked and saw the case
Plain as the nose not on his face.
"Oh! hum—ha—yes—I understand."
But then arose a long demur,
For not a finger would he stir
Till he was paid his fee in hand;
That matter settled, there they were,
With Hunks well strapped upon his chair.
The opening of a surgeon's job—
His tools, a chestful or a drawerful—
Are always something very awful,
And give the heart the strangest throb;
But never patient in his funks
Looked half so like a ghost as Hunks,
Or surgeon half so like a devil
Prepared for some infernal revel:
His huge black eye kept rolling, rolling,
Just like a bolus in a box:
His fury seemed above controlling,
He bellowed like a hunted ox:
"Now, swindling wretch, I'll show thee how
We treat such cheating knaves as thou;
Oh! sweet is this revenge to sup;
I have thee by the nose—it's now
My turn—and I will turn it up."
Guess how the miser liked the scurvy
And cruel way of venting passion;
The snubbing folks in this new fashion
Seemed quite to turn him topsy-turvy;
He uttered prayers, and groans, and curses,
For things had often gone amiss
And wrong with him before, but this
Would be the worst of all reverses!
In fancy he beheld his snout
Turned upwards like a pitcher's spout;
There was another grievance yet,
And fancy did not fail to show it,
That he must throw a summerset,
Or stand upon his head to blow it.
And was there then no argument
To change the doctor's vile intent,
And move his pity?—yes, in truth,
And that was—paying for the tooth.
"Zounds! pay for such a stump! I'd rather—"
But here the menace went no farther,
For with his other ways of pinching,
Hunks had a miser's love of snuff.
A recollection strong enough
To cause a very serious flinching;
In short, he paid and had the feature
Replaced as it was meant by nature;
For tho' by this 'twas cold to handle
(No corpse's could have felt so horrid),
And white just like an naked candle,
The doctor deemed and proved it too,
That noses from the nose will do
As well as noses from the forehead;
So, fixed by din of rag and lint,
The part was bandaged up and muffled.
The chair unfastened, Hunks rose,
And shuffled off, for once unshuffled;
And as he went, these words he snuffled—
"Well, this is 'paying thro' the nose.'"
"Alas! what perils do environ
That man who meddles with a siren!"—Hudibrus.
On Margate beach, where the sick one roams,
And the sentimental reads;
Where the maiden flirts, and the widow comes
Like the ocean—to cast her weeds;—
Where urchins wander to pick up shells,
And the Cit to spy at the ships,—
Like the water gala at Sadler's Wells,—
And the Chandler for watery dips;—
There's a maiden sits by the ocean brim,
As lovely and fair as sin!
But woe, deep water and woe to him,
That she snareth like Peter Fin!
Her head is crowned with pretty sea-wares,
And her locks are golden loose,
And seek to her feet, like other folks' heirs,
To stand, of course, in her shoes!
And all day long she combeth them well,
With a sea-shark's prickly jaw;
And her mouth is just like a rose-lipped shell,
The fairest that man e'er saw!
And the Fishmonger, humble as love may be
Hath planted his seat by her side;
"Good even, fair maid! Is thy lover at sea,
To make thee so watch the tide?"
She turned about with her pearly brows,
And clasped him by the hand;
"Come, love, with me; I've a bonny house
On the golden Goodwin sand."
And then she gave him a siren kiss,
No honeycomb e'er was sweeter;
Poor wretch! how little he dreamt for this
That Peter should be salt-Peter:
And away with her prize to the wave she leapt,
Not walking, as damsels do,
With toe and heel, as she ought to have stept,
But she hopped like a Kangaroo;
One plunge, and then the victim was blind,
Whilst they galloped across the tide;
At last, on the bank he waked in his mind,
And the Beauty was by his side
One half on the sand, and half in the sea,
But his hair began to stiffen;
For when he looked where her feet should be,
She had no more feet than Miss Biffen!
But a scaly tail, of a dolphin's growth,
In the dabbling brine did soak:
At last she opened her pearly mouth,
Like an oyster, and thus she spoke:
"You crimpt my father, who was a skate,—
And my sister you sold—a maid;
So here remain for a fish'ry fate,
For lost you are, and betrayed!"
And away she went, with a sea-gull's scream,
And a splash of her saucy tail;
In a moment he lost the silvery gleam
That shone on her splended mail!
The sun went down with a blood-red flame,
And the sky grew cloudy and black,
And the tumbling billows like leap-frog came,
Each over the other's back!
Ah me! it had been a beautiful scene,
With the safe terra-firma round;
But the green water-hillocks all seem'd to him
Like those in a churchyard ground;
And Christians love in the turf to lie,
Not in watery graves to be;
Nay, the very fishes will sooner die
On the land than in the sea.
And whilst he stood, the watery strife
Encroached on every hand,
And the ground decreased,—his moments of life
Seemed measured, like Time's, by sand;
And still the waters foamed in, like ale,
In front, and on either flank,
He knew that Goodwin and Co. must fail,
There was such a run on the bank.
A little more, and a little more,
The surges came tumbling in,
He sang the evening hymn twice o'er,
And thought of every sin!
Each flounder and plaice lay cold at his heart,
As cold as his marble slab;
And he thought he felt, in every part,
The pincers of scalded crab.
The squealing lobsters that he had boiled,
And the little potted shrimps,
All the horny prawns he had ever spoiled,
Gnawed into his soul, like imps!
And the billows were wandering to and fro,
And the glorious sun was sunk,
And Day, getting black in the face, as though
Of the nightshade she had drunk!
Had there been but a smuggler's cargo adrift,
One tub, or keg, to be seen,
It might have given his spirits a lift
Or an anker where Hope might lean!
But there was not a box or a beam afloat,
To raft him from that sad place;
Not a skiff, not a yawl, or a mackerel boat,
Nor a smack upon Neptune's face.
At last, his lingering hopes to buoy,
He saw a sail and a mast,
And called "Ahoy!"—but it was not a hoy,
And so the vessel went past.
And with saucy wing that flapped in his face,
The wild bird about him flew,
With a shrilly scream, that twitted his case,
"Why, thou art a sea-gull too!"
And lo! the tide was over his feet;
Oh! his heart began to freeze,
And slowly to pulse:—in another beat
The wave was up to his knees!
He was deafened amidst the mountain tops,
And the salt spray blinded his eyes,
And washed away the other salt drops
That grief had caused to arise:—
But just as his body was all afloat,
And the surges above him broke,
He was saved from the hungry deep by a boat
Of Deal—(but builded of oak).
The skipper gave him a dram, as he lay,
And chafed his shivering skin;
And the Angel returned that was flying away
With the spirit of Peter Fin!
On Hounslow Heath—and close beside the road,
As western travellers may oft have seen,—
A little house some years ago there stood,
A minikin abode;
And built like Mr. Birkbeck's, all of wood:
The walls of white, the window-shutters green,—
Four wheels it had at North, South, East, and West
(Though now at rest),
On which it used to wander to and fro,
Because its master ne'er maintained a rider,
Like those who trade in Paternoster Row;
But made his business travel for itself,
Till he had made his pelf,
And then retired—if one may call it so,
Of a roadsider.
Perchance, the very race and constant riot
Of stages, long and short, which thereby ran,
Made him more relish the repose and quiet
Of his now sedentary caravan;
Perchance, he loved the ground because 'twas common,
And so he might impale a strip of soil
That furnished, by his toil,
Some dusty greens, for him and his old woman;—
And five tall hollyhocks, in dingy flower:
Howbeit, the thoroughfare did no ways spoil
His peace,—unless, in some unlucky hour,
A stray horse came, and gobbled up his bow'r!
But, tired of always looking at the coaches,
The same to come,—when they had seen them one day!
And, used to brisker life, both man and wife
Began to suffer N U E's approaches,
And feel retirement like a long wet Sunday,—
So, having had some quarters of school breeding,
They turned themselves, like other folks, to reading;
But setting out where others nigh have done,
And being ripened in the seventh stage,
The childhood of old age,
Began, as other children have begun,—
Not with the pastorals of Mr. Pope,
Or Bard of Hope,
Or Paley ethical, or learned Porson,—
But spelt, on Sabbaths, in St. Mark, or John,
And then relax'd themselves with Whittington,
Or Valentine and Orson—
But chiefly fairy tales they loved to con,
And being easily melted in their dotage,
Slobber'd,—and kept
Reading,—and wept
Over the White Cat, in their wooden cottage.
Thus reading on—the longer
They read, of course, their childish faith grew stronger
In Gnomes, and Hags, and Elves, and Giants grim,—
If talking Trees and Birds revealed to him,
She saw the flight of Fairyland's fly-wagons,
And magic fishes swim
In puddle ponds, and took old crows for dragons,—
Both were quite drunk from the enchanted flagons;
When as it fell upon a summer's day,
As the old man sat a feeding
On the old babe-reading,
Beside his open street-and parlor door,
A hideous roar
Proclaimed a drove of beasts was coming by the way.
Long-horned, and short, of many a different breed,
Tall, tawny brutes, from famous Lincoln-levels
Or Durham feed;
With some of those unquiet black dwarf devils
From nether side of Tweed,
Or Firth of Forth;
Looking half wild with joy to leave the North,—
With dusty hides, all mobbing on together,—
When,—whether from a fly's malicious comment
Upon his tender flank, from which he shrank;
Or whether
Only in some enthusiastic moment,—
However, one brown monster, in a frisk,
Giving his tail a perpendicular whisk,
Kicked out a passage through the beastly rabble;
And after a pas seul,—or, if you will, a
Horn-pipe before the basket-maker's villa,
Leapt o'er the tiny pale,—
Backed his beefsteaks against the wooden gable,
And thrust his brawny bell-rope of a tail
Right o'er the page,
Wherein the sage
Just then was spelling some romantic fable.
The old man, half a scholar, half a dunce,
Could not peruse,—who could?—two tales at once;
And being huffed
At what he knew was none of Riquet's Tuft;
Banged-to the door,
But most unluckily enclosed a morsel
Of the intruding tail, and all the tassel:—
The monster gave a roar,
And bolting off with speed increased by pain,
The little house became a coach once more,
And, like Macheath, "took to the road" again!
Just then, by fortune's whimsical decree,
The ancient woman stooping with her crupper
Towards sweet home, or where sweet home should be,
Was getting up some household herbs for supper;
Thoughtful of Cinderella, in the tale,
And, quaintly wondering if magic shifts
Could o'er a common pumpkin so prevail,
To turn it to a coach;—what pretty gifts
Might come of cabbages, and curly kale;
Meanwhile she never heard her old man's wail,
Nor turned, till home had turned a corner, quite
Gone out of sight!
At last, conceive her, rising from the ground,
Weary of sitting on her russet clothing,
And looking round
Where rest was to be found,
There was no house—no villa there—no nothing!
No house!
The change was quite amazing;
It made her senses stagger for a minute,
The riddle's explication seemed to harden;
But soon her superannuated nous
Explain'd the horrid mystery;—and raising
Her hand to heaven, with the cabbage in it,
On which she meant to sup,—
"Well! this is Fairy work! I'll bet a farden,
Little Prince Silverwings has ketch'd me up,
And set me down in some one else's garden!"
'Tis strange how like a very dunce,
Man—with his bumps upon his sconce,
Has lived so long, and yet no knowledge he
Has had, till lately, of Phrenology—
A science that by simple dint of
Head-combing he should find a hint of,
When scratching o'er those little poll-hills,
The faculties throw up like mole-hills;
A science that, in very spite
Of all his teeth, ne'er came to light,
For though he knew his skull had grinders,
Still there turned up no organ finders,
Still sages wrote, and ages fled,
And no man's head came in his head—
Not even the pate of Erra Pater,
Knew aught about its pia mater.
At last great Dr. Gall bestirs him—
I don't know but it might be Spurzheim—
Tho' native of a dull and slow land,
And makes partition of our Poll-land;
At our Acquisitiveness guesses,
And all those necessary nesses
Indicative of human habits,
All burrowing in the head like rabbits.
Thus Veneration, he made known,
Had got a lodging at the Crown;
And Music (see Deville's example)
A set of chambers in the Temple;
That Language taught the tongues close by,
And took in pupils thro' the eye,
Close by his neighbor Computation,
Who taught the eyebrows numeration.
The science thus—to speak in fit
Terms—having struggled from its nit,
Was seized on by a swarm of Scotchmen
Those scientifical hotch-potch men,
Who have at least a penny dip,
And wallop in all doctorship,
Just as in making broth they smatter
By bobbing twenty things in water:
These men, I say, made quick appliance
And close, to phrenologic science;
For of all learned themes whatever,
That schools and colleges deliver,
There's none they love so near the bodles,
As analysing their own noddles;
Thus in a trice each northern blockhead
Had got his fingers in his shock head,
And of his bumps was babbling yet worse
Than poor Miss Capulet's dry wet-nurse;
Till having been sufficient rangers
Of their own heads, they took to strangers'.
And found in Presbyterians' polls
The things they hated in their souls!
For Presbyterians hear with passion
Of organs joined with veneration.
No kind there was of human pumpkin
But at its bumps it had a bumpkin;
Down to the very lowest gullion,
And oiliest skull of oily scullion.
No great man died but this they did do,
They begged his cranium of his widow:
No murderer died by law disaster,
But they took off his sconce in plaster;
For thereon they could show depending,
"The head and front of his offending":
How that his philanthropic bump
Was mastered by a baser lump;
For every bump (these wags insist)
Has its direct antagonist,
Each striving stoutly to prevail,
Like horses knotted tail to tail!
And many a stiff and sturdy battle
Occurs between these adverse cattle,
The secret cause, beyond all question,
Of aches ascribed to indigestion,—
Whereas 'tis but two knobby rivals
Tugging together like sheer devils,
Till one gets mastery, good or sinister,
And comes in like a new prime-minister.
Each bias in some master node is:—
What takes M'Adam where a road is,
To hammer little pebbles less?
His organ of Destructiveness.
What makes great Joseph so encumber
Debate? a lumping lump of Number:
Or Malthas rail at babies so?
The smallness of his Philopro—
What severs man and wife? a simple
Defect of the Adhesive pimple:
Or makes weak women go astray?
Their bumps are more in fault than they.
These facts being found and set in order
By grave M. D.'s beyond the Border,
To make them for some months eternal,
Were entered monthly in a journal,
That many a northern sage still writes in,
And throws his little Northern Lights in,
And proves and proves about the phrenos,
A great deal more than I or he knows:
How Music suffers, par exemple,
By wearing tight hats round the temple;
What ills great boxers have to fear
From blisters put behind the ear;
And how a porter's Veneration
Is hurt by porter's occupation;
Whether shillelaghs in reality
May deaden Individuality;
Or tongs and poker be creative
Of alterations in th' Amative;
If falls from scaffolds make us less
Inclined to all Constructiveness:
With more such matters, all applying
To heads—and therefore head-ifying.