OH, Mr. Spencer!
I mean no offence, sir—
Retrencher of each trencher—man or woman’s;
Maker of days of ember,
Eloquent Member
Of the House of Com—I mean to say short commons—
Thou Long Tom Coffin singing out, “Hold Fast”—
Avast!

Oh, Mr. Perceval! I’ll bet a dollar, a
Great growth of Cholera,
And new deaths reckon’d,
Will mark thy Lenten twenty-first and second.
The best of our physicians, when they con it,
Depose the malady is in the air:
Oh, Mr. Spencer! if the ill is there,
Why should you bid the people live upon it?

Why should you make discourses against courses,
While doctors, though they bid us rub and chafe,
Declare, of all resources,
The man is safest who gets in the safe?
And yet you bid poor suicidal sinners
Discard their dinners,
Thoughtless how Heaven above will look upon’t,
For man to die so wantonly of want!

By way of a variety,
Think of the ineffectual piety
Of London’s Bishop, at St. Faith’s or Bride’s,
Lecturing such chamelion insides,
Only to find
He’s preaching to the wind.

Whatever others do,—or don’t,
I cannot—dare not—must not fast, and won’t,
Unless by night your day you let me keep,
And fast asleep;
My constitution can’t obey such censors:
I must have meat
Three times a-day to eat;
My health’s of such a sort,—
To say the truth, in short,
The coats of my stomach are not Spencers!

I like exceedingly your Parthian dame,
Dimly remembering dramatic codgers,
The ghost of Memory—the shade of Fame!—
Lord! what a housekeeper for Mr. Rogers!
I like your savage, of a one-horse power;
And Terence, done in Irish from the Latin;
And Sally—quite a kitchen-garden flower;
And Mrs. Drake, serene in sky-blue satin!
I like your girl as speechless as a mummy—
It shows you can play dummy!—
I like your boy, deprived of every gleam
Of light for ever—a benighted being!
And really think—though Irish it may seem—
Your blindness is worth seeing.

I like your Governess; and there’s a striking
Tale of Two Brothers, that sets tears a-flowing—
But I’m not going
All through the bill to tell you of my liking.
Suffice it, Fanny Kelly! with your art
So much in love, like others I have grown,
I really mean myself to take a part
In “Free and Easy”—at my own bespeak—
And shall three times a week
Drop in and make your pretty house my own!

How fare thy Patients? are they dead or living,
Or, well as can expected be, with such
A style of practice, liberally giving
“A sum of more to that which had too much?”
Dost thou preserve the human frame, or turf it?
Do thorough draughts cure thorough colds or not?
Do fevers yield to anything that’s hot?
Or hearty dinners neutralise a surfeit?
Is’t good advice for gastronomic ills,
When Indigestion’s face with pain is crumpling,
To cry “Discard those Peristaltic Pills,
Take a hard dumpling!”

Tell me, thou German Cousin,
And tell me honestly without a diddle,
Does an attenuated dose of rosin
Act as a tonic on the old Scotch fiddle?
Tell me, when Anhalt-Coethen babies wriggle,
Like eels just caught by sniggle,
Martyrs to some acidity internal,
That gives them pangs infernal,
Meanwhile the lip grows black, the eye enlarges;
Say, comes there all at once a cherub-calm,
Thanks to that soothing homœopathic balm,
The half of half, of half, a drop of “varges?”

Suppose, for instance, upon Leipzig’s plain,
A soldier pillowed on a heap of slain,
In urgent want both of a priest and proctor;
When lo! there comes a man in green and red,
A featherless cocked-hat adorns his head,
In short a Saxon military doctor—
Would he, indeed, on the right treatment fix,
To cure a horrid gaping wound,
Made by a ball that weighed a pound,
If he well peppered it with number six?

Suppose a felon doomed to swing
Within a rope,
Might friends not hope
To cure him with a string?
Suppose his breath arrived at a full stop,
The shades of death in a black cloud before him,
Would a quintillionth dose of the New Drop
Restore him?

Fancy a man gone rabid from a bite,
Snapping to left and right,
And giving tongue like one of Sebright’s hounds,
Terrific sounds,
The pallid neighbourhood with horror cowing,
To hit the proper homœopathic mark;
Now, might not “the last taste in life” of bark,
Stop his bow-wow-ing?
Nay, with a well-known remedy to fit him,
Would he not mend, if with all proper care,
He took “a hair
Of the dog that bit him?”

Picture a man—we’ll say a Dutch Meinheer—
In evident emotion,
Bent o’er the bulwark of the Batavier,
Owning those symptoms queer—
Some feel in a Sick Transit o’er the ocean,
Can anything in life be more pathetic
Than when he turns to us his wretched face?—
But would it mend his case
To be decillionth-dosed
With something like the ghost
Of an emetic?

Lo! now a darkened room!
Look through the dreary gloom,
And see that coverlet of wildest form,
Tost like the billows in a storm,
Where ever and anon, with groans, emerges
A ghastly head!
While two impatient arms still beat the bed,
Like a strong swimmer’s struggling with the surges;
There Life and Death are on their battle-plain,
With many a mortal ecstasy of pain—
What shall support the body in its trial,
Cool the hot blood, wild dream, and parching skin,
And tame the raging malady within—
A sniff of Next-to-Nothing in a phial?

Oh! Doctor Hahnemann, if here I laugh,
And cry together, half and half,
Excuse me, ’tis a mood the subject brings,
To think, whilst I have crowed like chanticleer,
Perchance, from some dull eye the hopeless tear
Hath gushed, with my light levity at schism,
To mourn some Martyr of Empiricism!
Perchance, on thy own system, I have given
A pang superfluous to the pains of Sorrow,
Who weeps with Memory from morn till even;
Where comfort there is none to lend or borrow,
Sighing to one sad strain,
“She will not come again,
To-morrow, nor to-morrow, nor to-morrow!”

Doctor, forgive me, if I dare prescribe
A rule for thee thyself, and all thy tribe,
Inserting a few serious words by stealth;
Above all price of wealth
The Body’s Jewel,—not for minds profane,
Or hands, to tamper with in practice vain—
Like to a Woman’s Virtue is Man’s Health.
A heavenly gift within a holy shrine!
To be approached and touched with serious fear,
By hands made pure, and hearts of faith severe,
Even as the priesthood of the ONE divine!

But, zounds! each fellow with a suit of black,
And, strange to fame,
With a diploma’d name,
That carries two more letters pick-a-back,
With cane, and snuff-box, powdered wig, and block,
Invents his dose, as if it were a chrism,
And dares to treat our wondrous mechanism,
Familiar as the works of old Dutch clock;
Yet, how would common sense esteem the man,
Oh how, my unrelated German cousin,
Who having some such time-keeper on trial,
And finding it too fast, enforced the dial
To strike upon the Homœopathic plan
Of fourteen to the dozen?
Take my advice, ’tis given without a fee,
Drown, drown your book ten thousand fathoms deep
Like Prospero’s beneath the briny sea,
For spells of magic have all gone to sleep!
Leave no decillionth fragment of your works,
To help the interests of quacking Burkes;
Aid not in murdering even widow’s mites,—
And now forgive me for my candid zeal,
I had not said so much, but that I feel
Should you take ill what here my Muse indites,
An Ode-ling more will set you all to rights.

Fancy,—when droves appear on
The hill of Holborn, roaring from its top,—
Your ladies—ready, as they own, to drop,
Taking themselves to Thomson’s with a Fear-on!

Or, in St. Martin’s Lane,
Scared by a Bullock, in a frisky vein,—
Fancy the terror of your timid daughters
While rushing souse
Into a coffee-house,
To find it—Slaughter’s.

Or fancy this:—
Walking along the street, some stranger Miss,
Her head with no such thought of danger laden,
When suddenly ’tis “Aries Taurus Virgo!”
You don’t know Latin, I translate it ergo,
Into your Areas a Bull throws the Maiden!
Think of some poor old crone
Treated, just like a penny, with a toss!
At that vile spot now grown
So generally known
For making a Cow Cross!

Nay, fancy your own selves far off from stall,
Or shed, or shop—and that an Ox infuriate
Just pins you to the wall,
Giving you a strong dose of Oxy-Muriate!

Methinks I hear the neighbours that live round
The Market-ground
Thus make appeal unto their civic fellows—
“’Tis well for you that live apart—unable
To hear this brutal Babel,
But our firesides are troubled with their bellows.

“Folks that too freely sup
Must e’en put up
With their own troubles if they can’t digest;
But we must needs regard
The case as hard
The others’ victuals should disturb our rest,
That from our sleep your food should start and jump us!
We like, ourselves, a steak,
But, Sirs, for pity’s sake!
We don’t want oxen at our doors to rump-us!

“If we do doze—it really is too bad!
We constantly are roar’d awake or rung,
Through bullocks mad
That run in all the ‘Night Thoughts’ of our Young!”

Such are the woes of sleepers—now let’s take
The woes of those that wish to keep a Wake.
Oh think! when Wombell gives his annual feasts,
Think of these “Bulls of Basan,” far from mild ones;
Such fierce tame beasts,
That nobody much cares to see the Wild ones!

Think of the Show woman, “what shows a Dwarf,”
Seeing a red Cow come
To swallow her Tom Thumb,
And forc’d with broom of birch to keep her off!

Think, too, of Messrs. Richardson and Co.,
When looking at their public private boxes,
To see in the back row
Three live sheep’s heads, a porker’s and an Ox’s!
Think of their Orchestra, when two horns come
Through, to accompany the double drum!

Or, in the midst of murder and remorses,
Just when the Ghost is certain,
A great rent in the curtain,
And enter two tall skeletons—of Horses!

Great philanthropics! pray urge these topics!
Upon the solemn Councils of the Nation,
Get a Bill soon, and give, some noon,
The Bulls, a Bull of Excommunication!

Let the old Fair have fair-play as its right,
And to each show and sight
Ye shall be treated with a Free List latitude;
To Richardson’s Stage Dramas,
Dio—and Cosmo—ramas,
Giants and Indians wild,
Dwarf, Sea Bear, and Fat Child,
And that most rare of Shows—a Show of gratitude!

In melting verse your charms I drew,
The charms in which my muse delighted—
Alas! the lay I thought was new,
Spoke only what had been indicted!

Oh! when that form, a lovely one,
Hung on the neck its arms had flown to,
I little thought that you had run
A chance of hanging on your own too.

You said you pick’d me from the world,
My vanity it now must shock it—
And down at once my pride is hurl’d,
You’ve pick’d me—and you’ve pick’d a pocket.

Oh! when our love had got so far,
The bans were read by Dr. Daley,
Who asked if there was any bar—
Why did not some one shout “Old Bailey?”

But when you rob’d your flesh and bones
In that pure white that angel garb is,
Who could have thought you, Mary Jones,
Among the Joans that link with Darbies?

And when the parson came to say,
My goods were yours, if I had got any,
And you should honour and obey,
Who could have thought—“O Bay of Botany.”

But, oh,—the worst of all your slips
I did not till this day discover—
That down in Deptford’s prison ships,
Oh, Mary! you’ve a hulking lover!

He has shaved off his whiskers and blacken’d his brows,
Wears a patch and a wig of false hair,—
But it’s him—Oh it’s him!—we exchanged lovers’ vows,
When I lived up in Cavendish Square.

He had beautiful eyes, and his lips were the same,
And his voice was as soft as a flute—

Like a Lord or a Marquis he look’d when he came,
To make love in his master’s best suit.

If I lived for a thousand long years from my birth,
I shall never forget what he told;
How he lov’d me beyond the rich women of earth,
With their jewels and silver and gold!

When he kissed me and bade me adieu with a sigh,
By the light of the sweetest of moons,
Oh how little I dreamt I was bidding good-bye
To my Missis’s tea-pot and spoons!

We met—’twas in a mob—and I thought he had done me—
I felt—I could not feel—for no watch was upon me;
He ran—the night was cold—and his pace was unalter’d,
I too longed much to pelt—but my small-boned legs falter’d.
I wore my bran new boots—and unrivall’d their brightness,
They fit me to a hair—how I hated their tightness!
I call’d, but no one came, and my stride had a tether;
Oh thou hast been the cause of this anguish, my leather!

And once again we met—and an old pal was near him,
He swore a something low—but ’twas no use to fear him;
I seized upon his arm, he was mine and mine only,
And stept—as he deserv’d—to cells wretched and lonely;
And there he will be tried—but I shall ne’er receive her,
The watch that went too sure for an artful deceiver;
The world may think me gay,—heart and feet ache together,
Oh thou hast been the cause of this anguish, my leather.

IS this your faith, then, Fanny!
What, to chat with every Dun?
I’m the one, then, but of many,
Not of many, but the One!

Last night you smil’d on all, Ma’am,
That appear’d in scarlet dress;
And your Regimental Ball, Ma’am,
Look’d a little like a Mess.

I thought that of the Sogers
(As the Scotch say) one might do;
And that I, slight Ensign Rogers,
Was the chosen man and true.

But ‘Sblood! your eye was busy
With that ragamuffin mob;—
Colonel Buddell—Colonel Dizzy—
And Lieutenant-Colonel Cobb.

General Joblin, General Jodkin,
Colonels—Kelly, Felly, with
Majors—Sturgeon, Truffle, Bodkin
And the Quarter-master Smith.

Major Powderum—Major Dowdrum—
Major Chowdrum—Major Bye—
Captain Tawney—Captain Fawney,
Captain Any-one—but I!

Deuce take it! when the regiment
You so praised, I only thought
That you lov’d it in abridgement,
But I now am better taught!

I went, as loving man goes,
To admire thee in quadrilles;
But Fan, you dance fandangoes
With just any fop that wills!

I went with notes before us,
On the lay of Love to touch;
But with all the Corps in chorus,
Oh! it is indeed too much!

You once—ere you contracted
For the Army—seem’d my own;
But now you laugh with all the Staff,
And I may sigh alone!

I know not how it chances,
When my passion ever dares,
But the warmer my advances,
Then the cooler are your airs.

I am, I don’t conceal it,
But I am a little hurt;
You’re a Fan, and I must feel it,
Fit for nothing but a Flirt!

I dreamt thy smiles of beauty
On myself alone did fall;
But alas! “Cosi Fan Tutti!”
It is thus, Fan, thus with all!

You have taken quite a mob in
Of new military flames;—
They would make a fine Round Robin
If I gave you all their names!

MY dear, do pull the bell,
And pull it well,
And send those noisy children all up stairs,
Now playing here like bears—
You George, and William, go into the grounds,
Charles, James, and Bob are there,—and take your string,
Drive horses, or fly kites, or anything,
You’re quite enough to play at hare and hounds,—
You little May, and Caroline, and Poll,
Take each your doll,
And go, my dears, into the two-back pair,
Your sister Margaret’s there—
Harriet and Grace, thank God, are both at school,
At far off Ponty Pool—
I want to read, but really can’t get on—
Let the four twins, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John,
Go—to their nursery—go—I never can
Enjoy my Malthus among such a clan!

Oh Mr. Malthus, I agree
In everything I read with thee!
The world’s too full, there is no doubt,
And wants a deal of thinning out,—
It’s plain—as plain as Harrow Steeple—
And I agree with some thus far,
Who say the Queen’s too popular,
That is,—she has too many people.

There are too many of all trades,
Too many bakers,
Too many every-thing-makers,
But not too many undertakers,—
Too many boys,—
Too many hobby-de-hoys,—
Too many girls, men, widows, wives and maids,—
There is a dreadful surplus to demolish,
And yet some Wrongheads,
With thick not long heads,
Poor Metaphysicians!
Sign petitions
Capital punishment to abolish;
And in the face of censuses such vast ones
New hospitals contrive,
For keeping life alive,
Laying first stones, the dolts! instead of last ones!
Others, again, in the same contrariety,
Deem that of all Humane Society
They really deserve thanks,
Because the two banks of the Serpentine,
By their design,
Are Saving Banks.
Oh! were it given but to me to weed
The human breed,
And root out here and there some cumbering elf,
I think I could go through it,
And really do it
With profit to the world and to myself,—
For instance, the unkind among the Editors,
My debtors, those I mean to say
Who cannot or who will not pay
And all my creditors.

These, for my own sake, I’d destroy;
But for the world’s, and every one’s,
I’d hoe up Mrs. G—’s two sons,
And Mrs. B—’s big little boy,
Call’d only by herself an “only joy.”
As Mr. Irving’s chapel’s not too full,
Himself alone I’d pull—
But for the peace of years that have to run,
I’d make the Lord Mayor’s a perpetual station,
And put a period to rotation,
By rooting up all Aldermen but one,—
These are but hints what good might thus be done!
But ah! I fear the public good
Is little by the public understood,—
For instance—if with flint, and steel, and tinder,
Great Swing, for once a philanthropic man
Proposed to throw a light upon thy plan,
No doubt some busy fool would hinder
His burning all the Foundling to a cinder.

Or, if the Lord Mayor, on an Easter Monday,
That wine and bun-day,
Proposed to poison all the little Blue-coats
Before they died by bit or sup,
Some meddling Marplot would blow up,
Just at the moment critical,
The economy political
Of Saving their fresh yellow plush and new coats.
Equally ’twould be undone,
Suppose the Bishop of London,
On that great day
In June or May,
When all the large small family of charity,
Brown, black, or carroty,
Walk in their dusty parish shoes
In too, too many two-and-twos,
To sing together till they scare the walls
Of old St. Paul’s,
Sitting in red, grey, green, blue, drab, and white,
Some say a gratifying sight,
Tho’ I think sad—but that’s a schism—
To witness so much pauperism—

Suppose, I say, the Bishop then, to make
In this poor overcrowded world more room,
Proposed to shake
Down that immense extinguisher, the dome—
Some humane Martin in the charity Gal-way
I fear would come and interfere,
Save beadle, brat, and overseer,
To walk back in their parish shoes,
In too, too many two-and-twos,
Islington—Wapping—or Pall Mall way!

Thus people hatch’d from goose’s egg,
Foolishly think a pest a plague,
And in its face their doors all shut,
On hinges oil’d with cajeput—
Drugging themselves with drams well spiced and cloven,
And turning pale as linen rags,
At hoisting up of yellow flags,
While you and I are crying “Orange Boven!”
Why should we let precautions so absorb us,
Or trouble shipping with a quarantine—
When if I understand the thing you mean,
We ought to import the Cholera Morbus!

THE Dawn is overcast, the morning low’rs,
On ev’ry window-frame hang beaded damps
Like rows of small illumination lamps,
To celebrate the Jubilee of Show’rs!
A constant sprinkle patters from all leaves,
The very Dryads are not dry, but soppers,
And from the Houses’ eaves
Tumble eaves-droppers.

The hundred clerks that live along the street,
Bondsmen to mercantile and City schemers,
With squashing, sloshing and galoching feet,
Go paddling, paddling, through the wet, like steamers,
Each hurrying to earn the daily stipend—
Umbrellas pass of every shade of green,
And now and then a crimson one is seen,
Like an Umbrella ripen’d.

Over the way a waggon
Stands with six smoking horses, shrinking, blinking,
While in the George and Dragon
The man is keeping himself dry—and drinking!
The Butcher’s boy skulks underneath his tray,
Hats shine—shoes don’t—and down droop collars,
And one blue Parasol cries all the way
To school, in company with four small scholars!

Unhappy is the man to-day who rides,
Making his journey sloppier, not shorter;
Aye, there they go, a dozen of outsides,
Performing on “a Stage with real water!”
A dripping Pauper crawls along the way,
The only real willing out-of-doorer
And says, or seems to say,
“Well, I am poor enough—but here’s a pourer!”

The scene in water colours thus I paint,
Is your own Festival, you Sloppy Saint!
Mother of all the Family of Rainers!
Saint of the Soakers!
Making all people croakers,
Like frogs in swampy marshes, and complainers!
And why you mizzle forty days together,
Giving the earth your water-soup to sup,
I marvel—Why such wet, mysterious weather?
I wish you’d clear it up!
Why cast such cruel dampers
On pretty Pic Nics, and against all wishes
Set the cold ducks a-swimming in the hampers,
And volunteer, unask’d, to wash the dishes?
Why drive the Nymphs from the selected spot,
To cling like lady-birds around a tree—
Why spoil a Gipsy party at their tea,
By throwing your cold water upon hot?

Cannot a rural maiden, or a man,
Seek Hornsey-Wood by invitation, sipping
Their green with Pan,
But souse you come, and show their Pan, all dripping!
Why upon snow-white table-cloths and sheets,
That do not wait, or want a second washing,
Come squashing?
Why task yourself to lay the dust in streets,
As if there were no Water-Cart contractors,
No pot-boys spilling beer, no shop-boys ruddy
Spooning out puddles muddy,
Milkmaids, and other slopping benefactors!

A Queen you are, raining in your own right,
Yet oh! how little flatter’d by report!
Even by those that seek the Court,
Pelted with every term of spleen and spite.
Folks rail and swear at you in every place;
They say you are a creature of no bowel;
They say you’re always washing Nature’s face,
And that you then supply her,
With nothing drier,
Than some old wringing cloud by way of towel!
The whole town wants you duck’d, just as you duck it,
They wish you on your own mud porridge supper’d,
They hope that you may kick your own big bucket,
Or in your water-butt go sous! heels up’ard!
They are, in short, so weary of your drizzle,
They’d spill the water in your veins to stop it—
Be warn’d! You are too partial to a mizzle—
Pray drop it!