A Satire Anthology

THE DEVIL AT HOME

THE Devil sits in his easy chair,Sipping his sulphur tea,And gazing out, with a pensive air,O’er the broad bitumen sea;Lulled into sentimental moodBy the spirits’ far-off wail,That sweetly, o’er the burning flood,Floats on the brimstone gale!The Devil, who can be sad at times,In spite of all his mummery,And grave – though not so prosy quiteAs drawn by his friend Montgomery —The Devil to-day has a dreaming air,And his eye is raised, and his throat is bare;His musings are of many things,That, good or ill, befell,Since Adam’s sons macadamizedThe highways into hell:And the Devil – whose mirth is never loud —Laughs with a quiet mirth,As he thinks how well his serpent-tricksHave been mimicked upon earth;Of Eden, and of England soiled,And darkened by the footOf those who preach with adder-tongues,And those who eat the fruit;Of creeping things, that drag their slimeInto God’s chosen places,And knowledge leading into crimeBefore the angels’ faces;Of lands, from Nineveh to Spain,That have bowed beneath his sway,And men who did his work, from CainTo Viscount Castlereagh!Thomas Kibble Hervey.From “The Devil’s Progress.”

HOW TO MAKE A NOVEL

TRY with me, and mix what will make a novel,All hearts to transfix in house or hall or hovel:Put the caldron on, set the bellows blowing;We’ll produce anon something worth the showing.Never mind your plot – ’tisn’t worth the trouble;Throw into the pot what will boil and bubble.Character’s a jest – what’s the use of study?All will stand the test that’s black enough and bloody.Here’s the Newgate Guide, here’s the Causes Célèbres;Tumble in, besides, pistol, gun, and sabre;These police reports, those Old Bailey trials,Horrors of all sorts, to match the Seven Vials.Down into a well, lady, thrust your lover;Truth, as some folks tell, there he may discover;Step-dames, sure though slow, rivals of your daughters.Bring, as from below, Styx and all its waters.Crime that breaks all bounds, bigamy and arson,Poison, blood, and wounds, will carry well the farce on;Now it’s just in shape; yet, with fire and murder,Treason, too, and rape might help it all the further.Or, by way of change, in your wild narration,Choose adventures strange of fraud and personation;Make the job complete; let your vile assassinRob, and forge, and cheat, for his victim passin’.Tame is virtue’s school; paint, as more effective,Villain, knave, and fool, with always a detective;Hate for love may sit; gloom will do for gladness;Banish sense and wit, and dash in lots of madness.Stir the broth about, keep the furnace glowing;Soon we’ll pour it out, in three bright volumes flowing:Some may jeer and jibe; we know where the shop isReady to subscribe for a thousand copies.Lord Charles Neaves.

TWO CHARACTERS

THAN Lord de Vaux there’s no man sooner seesWhatever at a glance is visible;What is not, he can never see at all.Quick-witted is he, versatile, seizing points,He’ll see them all successively, distinctly,But never solving questions. Vain he is;It is his pride to see things on all sides;Which best to do he sets them on their corners.Present before him arguments by scores,Bearing diversely on the affair in hand,Yet never two of them can see together,Or gather, blend, and balance what he seesTo make up one account; a mind it isAccessible to reason’s subtlest rays,And many enter there, but none converge;It is an army with no general,An arch without a key-stone. Then the other,Good Martin Blondel-Vatre: he is richIn nothing else but difficulties and doubts.You shall be told the evil of your scheme,But not the scheme that’s better. He forgetsThat policy, expecting not clear gain,Deals ever in alternatives. He’s wiseIn negatives, is skilful at erasures,Expert in stepping backward, an adeptAt auguring eclipses. But admitHis apprehensions, and demand, what then?And you shall find you’ve turned the blank leaf over.Henry Taylor.

THE SAILOR’S CONSOLATION

ONE night came on a hurricane,The sea was mountains rolling,When Barney Buntline turned his quid,And said to Billy Bowling:“A strong nor’-wester’s blowing, Bill —Hark! don’t ye hear it roar now?Lord help ’em! how I pities allUnhappy folks on shore now!“Foolhardy chaps who live in town —What danger they are all in,And now are quaking in their beds,For fear the roof should fall in.Poor creatures! how they envies us,And wishes, I’ve a notion,For our good luck, in such a stormTo be upon the ocean.“But as for them who’re out all day,On business from their houses,And late at night are coming home,To cheer the babes and spouses,While you and I, Bill, on the deckAre comfortably lying,My eyes! what tiles and chimney-potsAbout their heads are flying!“And very often have we heardHow men are killed and undoneBy overturns of carriages,By thieves and fires in London.We know what risks all landsmen run,From noblemen to tailors;Then, Bill, let us thank ProvidenceThat you and I are sailors!”William Pitt.

VERSES ON SEEING THE SPEAKER

ASLEEP IN HIS CHAIR DURING

ONE OF THE DEBATES OF THE

FIRST REFORMED PARLIAMENT

SLEEP, Mr. Speaker; ’tis surely fair,If you mayn’t in your bed, that you shouldin your chair;Louder and longer still they grow,Tory and Radical, Aye and No;Talking by night and talking by day.Sleep, Mr. Speaker – sleep while you may!Sleep, Mr. Speaker; slumber liesLight and brief on a Speaker’s eyes;Fielden or Finn in a minute or twoSome disorderly thing will do;Riot will chase repose away.Sleep, Mr. Speaker – sleep while you may!Sleep, Mr. Speaker; Sweet to menIs the sleep that cometh but now and then;Sweet to the weary, sweet to the ill,Sweet to the children that work in the mill.You have more need of repose than they.Sleep, Mr. Speaker – sleep while you may!Sleep, Mr. Speaker; Harvey will soonMove to abolish the sun and the moon;Hume will no doubt be taking the senseOf the House on a question of sixteen pence;Statesmen will howl, and patriots bray.Sleep, Mr. Speaker – sleep while you may!Sleep, Mr. Speaker, and dream of the time,When loyalty was not quite a crime;When Grant was a pupil in Canning’s school,And Palmerston fancied Wood a fool.Lord, how principles pass away!Sleep, Mr. Speaker – sleep while you may!Winthrop M. Praed.

PELTERS OF PYRAMIDS

A  SHOAL of idlers, from a merchant craftAnchor’d off Alexandria, went ashore,And mounting asses in their headlong glee,Round Pompey’s Pillar rode with hoots and taunts,As men oft say, “What art thou more than we?”Next in a boat they floated up the Nile,Singing and drinking, swearing senseless oaths,Shouting, and laughing most derisivelyAt all majestic scenes. A bank they reach’d,And clambering up, play’d gambols among tombs;And in portentous ruins (through whose depths,The nightly twilight of departed gods,Both sun and moon glanced furtive, as in awe)They hid, and whoop’d, and spat on sacred things.At length, beneath the blazing sun they loungedNear a great Pyramid. Awhile they stoodWith stupid stare, until resentment grew,In the recoil of meanness from the vast;And gathering stones, they with coarse oaths and gibes(As they would say, “What art thou more than we?”)Pelted the Pyramid! But soon these men,Hot and exhausted, sat them down to drink —Wrangled, smok’d, spat, and laugh’d, and drowsilyCurs’d the bald Pyramid, and fell asleep.Night came. A little sand went drifting by,And morn again was in the soft blue heavens.The broad slopes of the shining PyramidLook’d down in their austere simplicityUpon the glistening silence of the sands,Whereon no trace of mortal dust was seen.Richard Hengist Horne.

THE ANNUITY

I  GAED to spend a week in Fife;An unco week it proved to be,For there I met a waesome wifeLamentin’ her viduity.Her grief brak out sae fierce and fell,I thought her heart wad burst the shell;And – I was sae left to mysel’ —I sell’t her an annuity.The bargain lookit fair eneugh —She just was turned o’ saxty-three.I couldna guessed she’d prove sae teugh,By human ingenuity.But years have come, and years have gane,And there she’s yet, as stieve as stane;The limmer’s growin’ young again,Since she got her annuity.She’s crined awa’ to bane and skin,But that, it seems, is naught to me;She’s like to live, although she’s inThe last stage o’ tenuity.She munches wi’ her wizen’d gums,An’ stumps about on legs o’ thrums,But comes, as sure as Christmas comes,To ca’ for her annuity.I read the tables drawn wi’ careFor an insurance company;Her chance o’ life was stated thereWi’ perfect perspicuity.But tables here, or tables there,She’s lived ten years beyond her share,An’ ’s like to live a dozen mair,To ca’ for her annuity.Last Yule she had a fearfu’ host;I thought a kink might set me free;I led her out, ’mang snaw and frost,Wi’ constant assiduity.But deil ma’ care – the blast gaed by,And miss’d the auld anatomy —It just cost me a tooth, forbyeDischarging her annuity.If there’s a sough o’ cholera,Or typhus, wha sae gleg as she?She buys up baths, an’ drugs, an’ a’,In siccan superfluity,She doesna need – she’s fever-proof;The pest walked o’er her very roof —She tauld me sae; an’ then her loofHeld out for her annuity.Ae day she fell, her arm she brak —A compound fracture as could be;Nae leech the cure wad undertake,Whate’er was the gratuity.It’s cured! she handles ’t like a flail —It does as weel in bits as hale;But I’m a broken man mysel’,Wi’ her and her annuity.Her broozled flesh and broken banesAre weel as flesh and banes can be;She beats the toads that live in stanesAn’ fatten in vacuity!They die when they’re exposed to air —They canna thole the atmosphere;But her! expose her onywhere,She lives for her annuity.If mortal means could nick her thread,Sma’ crime it wad appear to me;Ca’t murder – or ca’t homicide,I’d justify ’t, an’ do it tae.But how to fell a withered wifeThat’s carved out o’ the tree of life,The timmer limmer dares the knifeTo settle her annuity.I’d try a shot – but whar’s the mark?Her vital parts are hid frae me;Her backbone wanders through her sarkIn an unkenn’d corkscrewity.She’s palsified, an’ shakes her headSae fast about, ye scarce can see ’t;It’s past the power o’ steel or leadTo settle her annuity.She might be drowned, but go she’ll notWithin a mile o’ loch or sea;Or hanged, if cord could grip a throatO’ siccan exiguity.It’s fitter far to hang the rope —It draws out like a telescope;’Twad tak’ a dreadfu’ length o’ dropTo settle her annuity.Will poison do it? It has been tried,But be ’t in hash or fricassee,That’s just the dish she can’t abide,Whatever kind o’ gout it hae.It’s needless to assail her doubts;She gangs by instinct, like the brutes,An’ only eats an’ drinks what suitsHersel’ and her annuity.The Bible says the age o’ manThreescore and ten, perchance, may be;She’s ninety-four. Let them who can,Explain the incongruity.She should hae lived afore the flood;She’s come o’ patriarchal blood;She’s some auld Pagan mummified,Alive for her annuity.She’s been embalmed inside and oot;She’s sauted to the last degree;There’s pickle in her very snoot,Sae caper-like an’ cruety.Lot’s wife was fresh compared to her;They’ve kyanized the useless knir;She canna decompose – nae mairThan her accurs’d annuity.The water-drop wears out the rock,As this eternal jaud wears me;I could withstand the single shock,But not the continuity.It’s pay me here, an’ pay me there,An’ pay me, pay me, evermair.I’ll gang demented wi’ despair —I’m charged for her annuity.George Outram.

MALBROUCK

MALBROUCK, the prince of commanders,Is gone to the war in Flanders;His fame is like Alexander’s;But when will he come home?Perhaps at Trinity Feast, orPerhaps he may come at Easter.Egad! he had better make haste, orWe fear he may never come.For Trinity Feast is over,And has brought no news from Dover;And Easter is past, moreover,And Malbrouck still delays.Milady in her watch-towerSpends many a pensive hour,Not well knowing why or how herDear lord from England stays.While sitting quite forlorn inThat tower, she spies returningA page clad in deep mourning,With fainting steps and slow.“O page, prithee, come faster!What news do you bring of your master?I fear there is some disaster,Your looks are so full of woe.”“The news I bring, fair lady,”With sorrowful accent said he,“Is one you are not readySo soon, alas! to hear.“But since to speak I’m hurried,”Added this page, quite flurried,“Malbrouck is dead and buried!”(And here he shed a tear.)“He’s dead! he’s dead as a herring!For I beheld his ‘berring,’And four officers transferringHis corpse away from the field.“One officer carried his sabre,And he carried it not without labour,Much envying his next neighbour,Who only bore a shield.“The third was helmet-bearer —That helmet which on its wearerFilled all who saw with terror,And covered a hero’s brains.“Now, having got so far, IFind that (by the Lord Harry!)The fourth is left nothing to carry;So there the thing remains.”Translated by Father Prout.

A MAN’S REQUIREMENTS

LOVE me, sweet, with all thou art,Feeling, thinking, seeing;Love me in the lightest part,Love me in full being.Love me with thine open youthIn its frank surrender;With the vowing of thy mouth,With its silence tender.Love me with thine azure eyes,Made for earnest granting;Taking colour from the skies —Can Heaven’s truth be wanting?Love me with their lids, that fallSnow-like at first meeting;Love me with thine heart, that allNeighbours then see beating.Love me with thine hand, stretched outFreely, open-minded:Love me with thy loitering foot —Hearing one behind it.Love me with thy voice, that turnsSudden faint above me;Love me with thy blush, that burnsWhen I murmur, Love me!Love me with thy thinking soul,Break it to love-sighing;Love me with thy thoughts, that rollOn through living, dying.Love me in thy gorgeous airs,When the world has crown’d thee;Love me, kneeling at thy prayers,With the angels round thee.Love me pure, as musers do,Up the woodlands shady;Love me gayly, fast and true,As a winsome lady.Though all hopes that keep us brave,Further off or nigher,Love me for the house and grave,And for something higher.Thus, if thou wilt prove me, dear,Woman’s love no fable,I will love thee– half a year,As a man is able.Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

CRITICS

MY critic Hammond flatters prettily,And wants another volume like the last.My critic Belfair wants another bookEntirely different, which will sell (and live?) —A striking book, yet not a startling book.The public blames originalities(You must not pump spring water unawaresUpon a gracious public, full of nerves),Good things, not subtle, new, yet orthodox,As easy reading as the dog-eared pageThat’s fingered by said public fifty years,Since first taught spelling by its grandmother,And yet a revelation in some sort;That’s hard, my critic Belfair! So, what next?My critic Stokes objects to abstract thoughts;“Call a man John, a woman, Joan,” says he,“And do not prate so of humanities;”Whereat I call my critic simply Stokes.My critic Johnson recommends more mirth,Because a cheerful genius suits the times,And all true poets laugh unquenchably,Like Shakespeare and the gods. That’s very hard.The gods may laugh, and Shakespeare; Dante smiledWith such a needy heart on two pale lips,We cry, “Weep, rather, Dante.” Poems areMen, if true poems; and who dares exclaimAt any man’s door, “Here, ’tis understoodThe thunder fell last week and killed a wife,And scared a sickly husband – what of that?Get up, be merry, shout, and clap your hands,Because a cheerful genius suits the times?”None says so to the man – and why, indeed,Should any to the poem?Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

THE MISER

A  FELLOW all his life lived hoarding gold,And, dying, hoarded left it. And behold,One night his son saw peering through the houseA man, with yet the semblance of a mouse,Watching a crevice in the wall, and cried,“My father?” “Yes,” the Mussulman replied,“Thy father!” “But why watching thus?” “For fearLest any smell my treasure buried here.”“But wherefore, sir, so metamousified?”“Because, my son, such is the true outsideOf the inner soul by which I lived and died.”Edward Fitzgerald.

CACOËTHES SCRIBENDI

IF all the trees in all the woods were men,And each and every blade of grass a pen;If every leaf on every shrub and treeTurned to a sheet of foolscap; every seaWere changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribesHad nothing else to do but act as scribes,And for ten thousand ages, day and night,The human race should write, and write, and write,Till all the pens and paper were used up,And the huge inkstand was an empty cup,Still would the scribblers clustered round its brinkCall for more pens, more paper, and more ink.Oliver Wendell Holmes.

A FAMILIAR LETTER TO SEVERAL CORRESPONDENTS

YES, write if you want to – there’s nothing like trying;Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold?I’ll show you that rhyming’s as easy as lying,If you’ll listen to me while the art I unfold.Here’s a book full of words: one can choose as he fancies,As a painter his tint, as a workman his tool;Just think! all the poems and plays and romancesWere drawn out of this, like the fish from a pool!You can wander at will through its syllabled mazes,And take all you want – not a copper they cost;What is there to hinder your picking out phrasesFor an epic as clever as “Paradise Lost”?Don’t mind if the index of sense is at zero;Use words that run smoothly, whatever they mean;Leander and Lillian and LillibulleroAre much the same thing in the rhyming machine.There are words so delicious their sweetness will smotherThat boarding-school flavour of which we’re afraid;There is “lush” is a good one, and “swirl” is another;Put both in one stanza, its fortune is made.With musical murmurs and rhythmical closesYou can cheat us of smiles when you’ve nothing to tell;You hand us a nosegay of milliner’s roses,And we cry with delight, “Oh, how sweet they do smell!”Perhaps you will answer all needful conditionsFor winning the laurels to which you aspire,By docking the tails of the two prepositionsI’ the style o’ the bards you so greatly admire.As for subjects of verse, they are only too plentyFor ringing the changes on metrical chimes;A maiden, a moonbeam, a lover of twenty,Have filled that great basket with bushels of rhymes.Let me show you a picture – ’tis far from irrelevant —By a famous old hand in the arts of design;’Tis only a photographed sketch of an elephant;The name of the draughtsman was Rembrandt of Rhine.How easy! no troublesome colours to lay on;It can’t have fatigued him, no, not in the least;A dash here and there with a haphazard crayon,And there stands the wrinkled-skinned, baggy-limbed beast.Just so with your verse – ’tis as easy as sketching;You can reel off a song without knitting your brow,As lightly as Rembrandt a drawing or etching;It is nothing at all, if you only know how.Well, imagine you’ve printed your volume of verses;Your forehead is wreathed with the garland of fame;Your poem the eloquent school-boy rehearses;Her album the school-girl presents for your name.Each morning the post brings you autograph letters;You’ll answer them promptly – an hour isn’t muchFor the honour of sharing a page with your betters,With magistrates, members of Congress, and such.Of course you’re delighted to serve the committeesThat come with requests from the country all round;You would grace the occasion with poems and dittiesWhen they’ve got a new school-house, or poor-house, or pound.With a hymn for the saints, and a song for the sinners,You go and are welcome wherever you please;You’re a privileged guest at all manner of dinners;You’ve a seat on the platform among the grandees.At length your mere presence becomes a sensation;Your cup of enjoyment is filled to its brimWith the pleasure Horatian of digitmonstration,As the whisper runs round of “That’s he!” or “That’s him!”But, remember, O dealer in phrases sonorous,So daintily chosen, so tunefully matched,Though you soar with the wings of the cherubim o’er us,The ovum was human from which you were hatched.No will of your own, with its puny compulsion,Can summon the spirit that quickens the lyre;It comes, if at all, like the sibyl’s convulsion,And touches the brain with a finger of fire.So, perhaps, after all, it’s as well to be quiet,If you’ve nothing you think is worth saying in prose,As to furnish a meal of their cannibal dietTo the critics, by publishing, as you propose.But it’s all of no use, and I’m sorry I’ve written;I shall see your thin volume some day on my shelf;For the rhyming tarantula surely has bitten,And music must cure you, so pipe it yourself.Oliver Wendell Holmes.

CONTENTMENT

“MAN WANTS BUT LITTLE HERE BELOW”LITTLE I ask; my wants are few;I only wish a hut of stone(A very plain brown stone will do)That I may call my own;And close at hand is such a one,In yonder street that fronts the sun.Plain food is quite enough for me;Three courses are as good as ten;If Nature can subsist on three,Thank Heaven for three – Amen!I always thought cold victual nice —My choice would be vanilla-ice.I care not much for gold or land;Give me a mortgage here and there,Some good bank-stock, some note of hand,Or trifling railroad share.I only ask that Fortune sendA little more than I shall spend.Honours are silly toys, I know,And titles are but empty names;I would, perhaps, be Plenipo —But only near St. James;I’m very sure I should not careTo fill our Gubernator’s chair.Jewels are baubles; ’tis a sinTo care for such unfruitful things;One good-sized diamond in a pin,Some, not so large, in rings,A ruby, and a pearl or so,Will do for me; I laugh at show.My dame should dress in cheap attire(Good, heavy silks are never dear);I own, perhaps, I might desireSome shawls of true Cashmere —Some marrowy crapes of China silk,Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk.Wealth’s wasteful tricks I will not learn,Nor ape the glitt’ring upstart fool;Shall not carved tables serve my turn,But all must be of buhl?Give grasping pomp its double care —I ask but one recumbent chair.Thus humble let me live and die,Nor long for Midas’ golden touch;If Heaven more gen’rous gifts deny,I shall not miss them much —Too grateful for the blessing lentOf simple tastes and mind content!Oliver Wendell Holmes.

HOW TO MAKE A MAN OF CONSEQUENCE

A  BROW austere, a circumspective eye.A frequent shrug of the os humeri;A nod significant, a stately gait,A blustering manner, and a tone of weight,A smile sarcastic, an expressive stare:Adopt all these, as time and place will bear;Then rest assur’d that those of little senseWill deem you sure a man of consequence.Mark Lemon.

THE WIDOW MALONE

DID ye hear of the Widow Malone,Ohone!Who lived in the town of Athlone,Alone?Oh, she melted the heartsOf the swains in them parts,So lovely the Widow Malone,Ohone!So lovely the Widow Malone.Of lovers she had a full score,Or more;And fortunes they all had galore,In store;From the minister downTo the Clerk of the Crown,All were courting the Widow Malone,Ohone!All were courting the Widow Malone.But so modest was Mrs. Malone,’Twas knownNo one ever could see her alone,Ohone!Let them ogle and sigh,They could ne’er catch her eye,So bashful the Widow Malone,Ohone!So bashful the Widow Malone.Till one Mister O’Brien from Clare —How quare.It’s little for blushing they careDown there —Put his arm round her waist,Gave ten kisses at laste —“Oh,” says he, “you’re my Molly Malone,My own!”“Oh,” says he, “you’re my Molly Malone!”And the widow they all thought so shy,My eye!Ne’er thought of a simper or sigh —For why?“But, Lucius,” says she,“Since you’ve now made so free,You may marry your Molly Malone,Ohone!You may marry your Molly Malone.”There’s a moral contained in my song,Not wrong;And, one comfort, it’s not very long,But strong:If for widows you die,Learn to kiss, not to sigh,For they’re all like sweet Mistress Malone,Ohone!Oh! they’re very like Mistress Malone!Charles Lever.

THE PAUPER’S DRIVE

THERE’S a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly round trot;To the churchyard a pauper is going, I wot;The road it is rough, and the hearse has no springs;And hark to the dirge which the sad driver sings:Rattle his bones over the stones!He’s only a pauper, whom nobody owns.Oh, where are the mourners? Alas! there are none;He has left not a gap in the world, now he’s gone;Not a tear in the eye of child, woman, or man;To the grave with his carcass as fast as you can.Rattle his bones over the stones!He’s only a pauper, whom nobody owns.What a jolting, and creaking, and splashing, and din!The whip, how it cracks, and the wheels, how they spin!How the dirt, right and left, o’er the hedges is hurled!The pauper at length makes a noise in the world!Rattle his bones over the stones!He’s only a pauper, whom nobody owns.Poor pauper defunct! he has made some approachTo gentility, now that he’s stretched in a coach;He’s taking a drive in his carriage at last,But it will not be long, if he goes on so fast.Rattle his bones over the stones!He’s only a pauper, whom nobody owns.You bumpkins, who stare at your brother conveyed,Behold what respect to a cloddy is paid!And be joyful to think, when by death you’re laid low,You’ve a chance to the grave like a gemman to go.Rattle his bones over the stones!He’s only a pauper, whom nobody owns.But a truce to this strain; for my soul it is sad,To think that a heart in humanity cladShould make, like the brutes, such a desolate end,And depart from the light without leaving a friend.Bear soft his bones over the stones!Though a pauper, he’s one whom his Maker yet owns.Thomas Noel.