O goddess, sing what Bonynge next essayed. 
Did he unscabbard the avenging blade,
The long spear brandish and porrect the shield,
Havoc the town and devastate the field? 
His sacred thirst for blood did he allay
By halving the unfortunate Mackay? 
Small were the profit and the joy to him
To hew a base-born person, limb from limb. 
Let vulgar souls to low revenge incline,
That of diviner spirits is divine. 
Bonynge at noonday stood in public places
And (with regard to the Mackays) made faces! 
Before those formidable frowns and scowls
The dogs fled, tail-tucked, with affrighted howls,
And horses, terrified, with flying feet
O’erthrew the apple-stands along the street,
Involving the metropolis in vast
Financial ruin!  Man himself, aghast,
Retreated east and west and north and south
Before the menace of that twisted mouth,
Till Jove, in answer to their prayers, sent Night
To veil the dreadful visage from their sight!

Such were the causes of the horrid strife—­
The mother-wrongs which nourished it to life. 
O, for a quill from an archangel’s wing! 
O, for a voice that’s adequate to sing
The splendor and the terror of the fray,
The scattered hair, the coat-tails all astray,
The parted collars and the gouts of gore
Reeking and smoking on the banker’s floor,
The interlocking limbs, embraces dire,
Revolving bodies and deranged attire!

Vain, vain the trial:  ’tis vouchsafed to none
To sing two millionaires rolled into one! 
My hand and pen their offices refuse,
And hoarse and hoarser grows the weary muse. 
Alone remains, to tell of the event,
Abandoned, lost and variously rent,
The Bonynge nethermost habiliment.

A SONG IN PRAISE

Hail, blessed Blunder! golden idol, hail!—­
Clay-footed deity of all who fail. 
Celestial image, let thy glory shine,
Thy feet concealing, but a lamp to mine. 
Let me, at seasons opportune and fit,
By turns adore thee and by turns commit. 
In thy high service let me ever be
(Yet never serve thee as my critics me)
Happy and fallible, content to feel
I blunder chiefly when to thee I kneel. 
But best felicity is his thy praise
Who utters unaware in works and ways—­
Who laborare est orare proves,
And feels thy suasion wheresoe’er he moves,
Serving thy purpose, not thine altar, still,
And working, for he thinks it his, thy will. 
If such a life with blessings be not fraught,
I envy Peter Robertson for naught.

A POET’S FATHER