165

SONG OF A FALLEN ANGEL OVER A BOWL OF RUM-PUNCH

By T. M., Esq.

HEAP on more coal there,

And keep the glass moving,

The frost nips my nose,

Though my heart glows with loving.

Here's the dear creature,

No skylights-a bumper;

He who leaves heeltaps

I vote him a mumper.
With hey cow rumble O,
Whack! populorum,

Merrily, merry men,

Push round the jorum.

What are Heaven's pleasures
That so very sweet are?
Singing from psalters,

In long or short metre.
Planked on a wet cloud
Without any breeches,
Just like the Celtic,

Met to make speeches.

With hey cow rumble O, etc.

Wide is the difference,
My own boosing bullies,
Here the round punch-bowl
Heaped to the full is.
Then if some wise one
Thinks that up "yonder"

Is pleasant as we are,
Why he's in a blunder.

With hey cow rumble O, etc.

JOHN WILSON (1785-1854).

166

THE MODERN NECTAR

ONE day, as Bacchus wandered out
From his own gay and glorious heaven,
To see what mortals were about

Below, 'twixt six o'clock and seven,
And laugh at all the toils and tears,
The sudden hopes, the causeless fears,
The midnight songs, the morning smarts,
The aching heads, the breaking hearts,
Which he and his fair crony Venus
Within the month had sown between us;
He lighted by chance on a fiddling fellow
Who never was known to be less than mellow,
A wandering poet, who thought it his duty
To feed upon nothing but bowls and beauty,

Who worshipped a rhyme, and detested a

quarrel,

And cared not a single straw for laurel,
Holding that grief was sobriety's daughter,
And loathing critics, and cold water.

Ere day on the Gog-Magog hills had fainted, The god and the minstrel were quite acquainted;

Beneath a tree, in the sunny weather,

They sat them down and drank together:
They drank of all fluids that ever were poured
By an English lout, or a German lord;
Rum and shrub, and brandy and gin,

One after another, they stowed them in,
Claret of Carbonell, porter of Meux,
Champagne which would waken a wit in
dukes,

Humble Port and proud Tokay,
Persico and Crême de Thé,

The blundering Irishman's Usquebaugh,
The fiery Welshman's Cwrw da;
And after toasting various names
Of mortal and immortal flames,

And whispering more than I or you know
Of Mistress Poll and Mistress Juno,
The god departed, scarcely knowing
A Zephyr's from a nose's blowing,
A frigate from a pewter flagon,
Or Thespis from his own stage waggon;
And, rolling about like a barrel of grog,
He went up to heaven as drunk as a hog!

"Now may I," he lisped, "for ever sit
In Lethe's darkest and deepest pit,
Where dulness everlasting reigns

O'er the quiet pulse and the drowsy brains,
Where ladies jest, and lovers laugh,

And noble lords are bound in calf,

And Zoilus for his sins rehearses

Old Bentham's prose, old Wordsworth's verses, If I have not found a richer draught

Than ever yet Olympus quaffed,

Better and brighter and dearer far

Than the golden sands of Pactolus are!"

And then he filled in triumph up,

To the highest top sparkle, Jove's beaming

cup,

And pulling up his silver hose,

And turning in his tottering toes,

(While Hebe, as usual, the mischievous gipsy,
Was laughing to see her brother tipsy),
He said "May it please your high Divinity,
This nectar is-Milk Punch at Trinity!"

WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED
(1802-1839).

167

OLD WINE

It was my father's wine,-alas!
It was his chiefest bliss

To fill an old friend's evening glass
With nectar such as this.
I think I have as warm a heart,
As kind a friend as he;
Another bumper ere we part:
Old wine, old wine for me!

In this we toasted William Pitt,
Whom twenty now outshine;
O'er this we laughed at Canning's wit,
Ere Hume's was thought as fine;

In this "The King"-"The Church"-"The
Laws"

Have had their three times three;
Sound wine befits as sound a cause;
Old wine, old wine for me!

In this, when France in those long wars
Was beaten black and blue,

We used to drink our troops and tars,

Our Wellesley and Pellew;

Now things are changed, though Britain's fame

May out of fashion be,

At least my wine remains the same:

Old wine, old wine for me!