And cheat the unsuspecting ear
With groundless hope, or groundless fear.
To speak in civil words, his bent
Lies sadly to-embellishment.
Sir," says Morality, "you know
You shouldn't flatter Falsehood so:
The nurse that rocked you in your crib
Taught you to loathe and scorn a fib;
And Shakspeare warns you of the evil,
Saying "Tell truth, and shame the devil!'
I like, as well as you, the glances
Where gay good humour brightly dances;
But when a man tells horrid lies,——
You shouldn't talk about his eyes."
Madam! you'll think it rather odd,
That, while I bow me to the rod,
And make no shadow of defence,
I still persist in my offence:
And great and small may join to blame
The echo of the hoaxer's fame;
But, be it known to great and small,-
I can't write sermons at a ball.
'Tis Alfred fills the public prints
With all the sly ingenious hints
That fly about, begirt with cares,
And terrify the Bulls and Bears.
Unrivalled statesman! war and peace
He makes and breaks with perfect ease;
Skilful to crown and to depose,
He sets up kings, and overthrows;
As if apprenticed to the work,
He ties the bowstring round the Turk,
Or makes the Algerine devout,
Or plagues his Holiness with gout,
Or drives the Spaniard from Madrid
As quick as Bonapartè did.
Sometimes at home his plots he lays,
And wildly still his fancy plays;,
He pulls the Speaker from the chair,
Murders the Sheriffs, or the Mayor,
Or drags a Bishop through the mire,
Or sets the theatres on fire,
Or brings the weavers to subjection,
Or prates of mobs and insurrection.
One dash of his creative pen
Can raise a hundred thousand men:
They march! he wills, and myriads fall ;— One dash annihilates them all!
And now, amid that female rout,
What scandal doth he buzz about?
What grand affair or mighty name
Entrusts he to the gossip Fame?
Unchecked, unstayed, he hurries on
With wondrous stories of the Ton;
Describes how London ladies lose
Their heads in helmets-like the Blues,
And how the highest circles meet
To dance with pattens on their feet!
And all the while he tells his lie
With such a solemn gravity,
That many a Miss parades the room
Dreaming about a casque and plume,
And vows it grievously must tire one
To waltz upon a pump of iron.
Jacques, the Cantab! I see him brood,
Wrapt in his mental solitude,
On thoughts that lie too deep, I wis,
For such a scene and hour as this.
Now shall the rivers freeze in May,
Coquettes be silent at the play;
Old men shall dine without a story,
And mobs be civil to a Tory!
All miracles shall well befall,
When Youth is thoughtful at a ball.
From thoughts that grieve, and words that vex,
And names invented to perplex;
From latent findings, never found,
And mystic figures, square and round;
Shapes, from whose labyrinthine toil
A Dædalus might well recoil,
He steals one night-one single night-
And gives its moments to delight.
Yet still upon his struggling soul
The muddy wave of Cam will roll,
And all the monsters grim, that float
Upon that dark and murky moat,
Come jabbering round him,-dark equation,
Subtle distinction, disputation;
Notion, idea, mystic schism,
Assumption, proof, and syllogism,
And many an old and awful name
Of optic or mechanic fame.
Look! in the van stern Euclid shows
The Asses'-Bridge upon his nose;
Bacon comes forward, sage austere,
And Locke and Paley both are there;
And Newton, with a spiteful hiss,
Points to his "De Principiis."
Yet often with his magic wand
Doth Mirth dispel that hideous band;
And then in strange confusion lost
The mind of Jacques is tempest-tossed:
By turns around it come and flee
The dulce and the utile;
By turns, as Thought or Pleasure wills,
Quadratics struggle with quadrilles ;
And figures sour and figures sweet,
Of problems-and of dances-meet;
Bisections fight with "down the middle's,
And chords of arcs with chords of fiddles;
Vain are the poor musician's graces;
His bass gives way to given bases—
His studied trill to shapely trine—
His mellowed shake to puzzling sine :
Each forming set recals a vision
Of some enchanting proposition,
And merry "Chassez-croisès huit”
Is little more than Q. E. D.
Ah Stoic youth! before his eye
Bright beauties walk unheeded by;
And, while his distant fancy strays
Remote through Algebraic maze,
He sees in whatsoe'er he views
The very object he pursues;
And fairest forms, from heel to head,
Seem crooked as his x and z.
Peace to the man of marble !—
Whence is the universal rush?
Why doth confusion thus affright
The peaceful order of the night,
Thwart the musicians in their task,
And check the schoolboy's pas de basque?
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