Читать книгу The Humorous Poetry of the English Language; from Chaucer to Saxe - Various - Страница 37

"HAM. The air bites shrewdly—it is very cold.

HOR. It is a nipping and eager air."—HAMLET.

Come, GENTLE Spring! ethereal MILDNESS, come!

O! Thomson, void of rhyme as well as reason,

How couldst thou thus poor human nature hum?

There's no such season.

The Spring! I shrink and shudder at her name!

For why, I find her breath a bitter blighter!

And suffer from her BLOWS as if they came

From Spring the Fighter.

Her praises, then, let hardy poets sing,

And be her tuneful laureates and upholders,

Who do not feel as if they had a SPRING

Poured down their shoulders!

Let others eulogize her floral shows;

From me they can not win a single stanza.

I know her blooms are in full blow—and so's

The Influenza.

Her cowslips, stocks, and lilies of the vale,

Her honey-blossoms that you hear the bees at,

Her pansies, daffodils, and primrose pale,

Are things I sneeze at!

Fair is the vernal quarter of the year!

And fair its early buddings and its blowings—

But just suppose Consumption's seeds appear

With other sowings!

For me, I find, when eastern winds are high,

A frigid, not a genial inspiration;

Nor can, like Iron-Chested Chubb, defy

An inflammation.

Smitten by breezes from the land of plague,

To me all vernal luxuries are fables,

O! where's the SPRING in a rheumatic leg,

Stiff as a table's?

I limp in agony—I wheeze and cough;

And quake with Ague, that great Agitator,

Nor dream, before July, of leaving off

My Respirator.

What wonder if in May itself I lack

A peg for laudatory verse to hang on?—

Spring, mild and gentle!—yes, a Spring-heeled Jack

To those he sprang on.

In short, whatever panegyrics lie

In fulsome odes too many to be cited,

The tenderness of Spring is all my eye,

And that is blighted!