“Was the prophecy fulfilled?”
The sullen disc of the declining sun
Was crimson with a curse and a portent,
And scarce his angry ray lit up the land
That lay below, whose lurid gloom appeared
Freaked with a moving mist, which, reeking
up
From dim tarns hateful with a horrid ban,
Took shapes forbidden and without a name.
Gigantic night-birds, rising from the
reeds
With cries discordant, startled all the
air,
And bodiless voices babbled in the gloom.
But not to me came any voice again;
And, covering my face with thin, dead
hands,
I wept, and woke, and cried aloud to God!
POLITICS.
That land full surely hastens to its end
Where public sycophants in homage bend
The populace to flatter, and repeat
The doubled echoes of its loud conceit.
Lowly their attitude but high their aim,
They creep to eminence through paths of
shame,
Till fixed securely in the seats of pow’r,
The dupes they flattered they at last
devour.
Poesy.
Successive bards pursue Ambition’s
fire
That shines, Oblivion, above thy mire.
The latest mounts his predecessor’s
trunk,
And sinks his brother ere himself is sunk.
So die ingloriously Fame’s elite,
But dams of dunces keep the line complete.
IN DEFENSE.
You may say, if you please, Johnny Bull,
that our girls
Are crazy to marry your dukes and your
earls;
But I’ve heard that the maids of
your own little isle
Greet bachelor lords with a favoring smile.
Nay, titles, ’tis said in defense
of our fair,
Are popular here because popular there;
And for them our ladies persistently go
Because ’tis exceedingly English,
you know.
Whatever the motive, you’ll have
to confess
The effort’s attended with easy
success;
And—pardon the freedom—’tis
thought, over here,
’Tis mortification you mask with
a sneer.
It’s all very well, sir, your scorn
to parade
Of the high nasal twang of the Yankee
maid,
But, ah, to my lord when he dares to propose
No sound is so sweet as that “Yes”
from the nose.
Our ladies, we grant, walk alone in the
street
(Observe, by-the-by, on what delicate
feet!)
’Tis a habit they got here at home,
where they say
The men from politeness go seldom astray.
Ah, well, if the dukes and the earls and
that lot
Can stand it (God succor them if they
cannot!)
Your commoners ought to assent, I am sure,
And what they ’re not called on
to suffer, endure.
“’Tis nothing but money?”
“Your nobles are bought?”
As to that, I submit, it is commonly thought
That England’s a country not specially
free
Of Croesi and (if you’ll allow it)
Croesae.
You’ve many a widow and many a girl
With money to purchase a duke or an earl.
’Tis a very remarkable thing, you’ll
agree,
When goods import buyers from over the
sea.