(for you don’t wash)
And make Peples Stockins yeller as oght to be Blew, With a vast more like That,—and all along of Steem Which warnt meand by Nater for any sich skeam— But thats your Losses and youl have to make It Good, And I cant say I’m Sorry afore God if you shoud, For men mought Get their Bread a great many ways Without taking ourn,—aye, and Moor to your Prays You might go and skim the creme off Mr. Muck-Adam’s milky ways—that’s
what you might,
Or bete Carpets—or get into Parleamint,—or drive Crabrolays from
morning to night,
Or, if you must be of our sects, be Watchmen, and slepe upon a poste! (Which is an od way of sleping, I must say,—and a very hard pillow at
most,)
Or you might be any trade, as we are not on that I’m awares, Or be Watermen now, (not Water-wommen) and roe peple up and down
Hungerford stares,
Or if You Was even to Turn Dust Men a dry sifting Dirt! But you oughtint to Hurt Them as never Did You no Hurt!
Yourn with Anymocity,
BRIDGET JONES.
ODE TO CAPTAIN PAERY[24]
“By the North Pole, I do challenge
thee!”
Love’s
Labour’s Lost.
[Footnote 24: The famous Arctic explorer was engaged for many years, from 1818 onwards, in his various efforts to discover the North-West Passage. He died in 1855.]
I.
Parry, my man! has thy brave leg
Yet struck its foot against the peg
On which the world is spun?
Or hast thou found No Thoroughfare
Writ by the hand of Nature there
Where man has never run!
II.
Hast thou yet traced the Great Unknown
Of channels in the Frozen Zone,
Or held at Icy Bay,
Hast thou still miss’d the proper track
For homeward Indian men that lack
A bracing by the way?
III.
Still hast thou wasted toil and trouble
On nothing but the North-Sea Bubble
Of geographic scholar?
Or found new ways for ships to shape,
Instead of winding round the Cape,
A short cut thro’ the collar?
IV.
Hast found the way that sighs were sent to
The Pole—tho’ God knows whom they
went to!
That track reveal’d to Pope—
Or if the Arctic waters sally,
Or terminate in some blind alley,
A chilly path to grope?
V.
Alas! tho’ Ross, in love with snows,
Has painted them couleur de rose,
It is a dismal doom,
As Clauclio saith, to Winter thrice,
“In regions of thick-ribbed ice”—
All bright,—and yet all gloom!