THE UNDYING ONE.
“He shall not die.”—Uncle Toby.
I.
OF all the verses, grave or gay,
That ever whiled an hour,
I never knew a mingled lay
At once so sweet and sour,
As that by Ladye Norton spun,
And christened “The Undying One.”
II.
I’m very certain that she drew
A portrait, when she penn’d
That picture of a perfect Jew,
Whose days will never end:
I’m sure it means my Uncle Lunn,
For he is an Undying One.
Those twenty years he’s been the same,
And may be twenty more;
But Memory’s Pleasures only claim
His features for a score;
Yet in that time the change is none—
The image of th’ Undying One!
IV.
They say our climate’s damp and cold,
And lungs are tender things;
My uncle’s much abroad and old,
But when “King Cole” he sings,
A Stentor’s voice, enough to stun,
Declares him an Undying One.
Others have died from needle-pricks,
And very slender blows;
From accidental slips or kicks,
Or bleedings at the nose;
Or choked by grape-stone, or a bun—
But he is the Undying One!
VI.
A soldier once, he once endur’d
A bullet in the breast—
It might have kill’d—but only cured
An asthma in the chest;
He was not to be slain with gun,
For he is the Undying One.
VII.
In water once too long he dived,
And all supposed him beat,
He seem’d so cold—but he revived
To have another heat,
Just when we thought his race was run,
And came in fresh—th’ Undying One!
VIII.
To look at Meux’s once he went,
And tumbled in the vat—
And greater Jobs their lives have spent
In lesser boils than that,—
He left the beer quite underdone,
No bier to the Undying One!
He’s been from strangulation black,
From bile, of yellow hue,
Scarlet from fever’s hot attack,
From cholera morbus blue;
Yet with these dyes—to use a pun—
He still is the Undying One.
X.
He rolls in wealth, yet has no wife
His three per Cents. to share;
He never married in his life,
Or flirted with the fair;
The sex he made a point to shun,
For beauty an Undying One.
XI.
To judge him by the present signs,
The future by the past,
So quick he lives, so slow declines,
The Last Man won’t be last,
But buried underneath a ton
Of mould by the Undying One!
XII.
Next Friday week, his birth-day boast,
His ninetieth year he spends,
And I shall have his health to toast
Amongst expectant friends,
And wish—it really sounds like fun—
Long life to the Undying One!