Читать книгу The Humorous Poetry of the English Language; from Chaucer to Saxe - Various - Страница 40

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Twelve years ago I made a mock

Of filthy trades and traffics:

I wondered what they meant by stock;

I wrote delightful sapphics:

I knew the streets of Rome and Troy,

I supped with fates and furies;

Twelve years ago I was a boy,

A happy boy at Drury's.

Twelve years ago!—how many a thought

Of faded pains and pleasures,

Those whispered syllables have brought

From memory's hoarded treasures!

The fields, the forms, the beasts, the books.

The glories and disgraces,

The voices of dear friends, the looks

Of old familiar faces.

Where are my friends?—I am alone,

No playmate shares my beaker—

Some lie beneath the church-yard stone,

And some before the Speaker;

And some compose a tragedy,

And some compose a rondo;

And some draw sword for liberty,

And some draw pleas for John Doe.

Tom Mill was used to blacken eyes,

Without the fear of sessions;

Charles Medler loathed false quantities,

As much as false professions;

Now Mill keeps order in the land,

A magistrate pedantic;

And Medler's feet repose unscanned

Beneath the wide Atlantic.

Wild Nick, whose oaths made such a din,

Does Dr. Martext's duty;

And Mullion, with that monstrous chin,

Is married to a beauty;

And Darrel studies, week by week,

His Mant and not his Manton;

And Ball, who was but poor at Greek,

Is very rich at Canton.

And I am eight-and-twenty now—

The world's cold chain has bound me;

And darker shades are on my brow,

And sadder scenes around me:

In Parliament I fill my seat,

With many other noodles;

And lay my head in Germyn-street,

And sip my hock at Doodle's.

But often when the cares of life,

Have set my temples aching,

When visions haunt me of a wife,

When duns await my waking,

When Lady Jane is in a pet,

Or Hobby in a hurry,

When Captain Hazard wins a bet,

Or Beauheu spoils a curry:

For hours and hours, I think and talk

Of each remembered hobby:

I long to lounge in Poet's Walk—

Or shiver in the lobby;

I wish that I could run away

From House, and court, and levee,

Where bearded men appear to-day,

Just Eton boys, grown heavy;

That I could bask in childhood's sun,

And dance o'er childhood's roses;

And find huge wealth in one pound one,

Vast wit and broken noses;

And pray Sir Giles at Datchet Lane,

And call the milk-maids Houris;

That I could be a boy again—

A happy boy at Drury's!