Earlier Poems (1830-1836) | Page 6

quite as
well
Hushed up among one's friends!

THE COMET
THE Comet! He is on his way,
And singing as he flies;
The
whizzing planets shrink before
The spectre of the skies;
Ah! well
may regal orbs burn blue,
And satellites turn pale,
Ten million
cubic miles of head,
Ten billion leagues of tail!
On, on by whistling spheres of light
He flashes and he flames;
He
turns not to the left nor right,
He asks them not their names;
One
spurn from his demoniac heel,--
Away, away they fly,
Where
darkness might be bottled up
And sold for "Tyrian dye."
And what would happen to the land,
And how would look the sea,

If in the bearded devil's path
Our earth should chance to be?
Full
hot and high the sea would boil,
Full red the forests gleam;

Methought I saw and heard it all
In a dyspeptic dream!
I saw a tutor take his tube
The Comet's course to spy;
I heard a
scream,--the gathered rays
Had stewed the tutor's eye;
I saw a
fort,--the soldiers all
Were armed with goggles green;
Pop cracked
the guns! whiz flew the balls!
Bang went the magazine!
I saw a poet dip a scroll
Each moment in a tub,
I read upon the
warping back,
"The Dream of Beelzebub;"
He could not see his
verses burn,
Although his brain was fried,
And ever and anon he
bent
To wet them as they dried.
I saw the scalding pitch roll down
The crackling, sweating pines,

And streams of smoke, like water-spouts,
Burst through the rumbling
mines;
I asked the firemen why they made

Such noise about the
town;
They answered not,--but all the while
The brakes went up
and down.
I saw a roasting pullet sit
Upon a baking egg;
I saw a cripple scorch
his hand
Extinguishing his leg;
I saw nine geese upon the wing


Towards the frozen pole,
And every mother's gosling fell
Crisped to
a crackling coal.
I saw the ox that browsed the grass
Writhe in the blistering rays,

The herbage in his shrinking jaws
Was all a fiery blaze;
I saw huge
fishes, boiled to rags,
Bob through the bubbling brine;
And
thoughts of supper crossed my soul;
I had been rash at mine.
Strange sights! strange sounds! Oh fearful dream!
Its memory haunts
me still,
The steaming sea, the crimson glare,
That wreathed each
wooded hill;
Stranger! if through thy reeling brain
Such midnight
visions sweep,
Spare, spare, oh, spare thine evening meal,
And
sweet shall be thy sleep!
THE MUSIC-GRINDERS
THERE are three ways in which men take
One's money from his
purse,
And very hard it is to tell
Which of the three is worse;
But
all of them are bad enough
To make a body curse.
You're riding out some pleasant day,
And counting up your gains;

A fellow jumps from out a bush,
And takes your horse's reins,

Another hints some words about
A bullet in your brains.
It's hard to meet such pressing friends
In such a lonely spot;
It's
very hard to lose your cash,
But harder to be shot;
And so you take
your wallet out,
Though you would rather not.
Perhaps you're going out to dine,--
Some odious creature begs

You'll hear about the cannon-ball
That carried off his pegs,
And
says it is a dreadful thing
For men to lose their legs.
He tells you of his starving wife,
His children to be fed,
Poor little,
lovely innocents,
All clamorous for bread,--

And so you kindly help
to put
A bachelor to bed.

You're sitting on your window-seat,
Beneath a cloudless moon;

You hear a sound, that seems to wear
The semblance of a tune,
As
if a broken fife should strive
To drown a cracked bassoon.
And nearer, nearer still, the tide
Of music seems to come,
There's
something like a human voice,
And something like a drum;
You sit
in speechless agony,
Until your ear is numb.
Poor "home, sweet home" should seem to be
A very dismal place;

Your "auld acquaintance" all at once
Is altered in the face;
Their
discords sting through Burns and Moore,
Like hedgehogs dressed in
lace.
You think they are crusaders, sent
From some infernal clime,
To
pluck the eyes of Sentiment,
And dock the tail of Rhyme,
To crack
the voice of Melody,
And break the legs of Time.
But hark! the air again is still,
The music all is ground,
And silence,
like a poultice, comes
To heal the blows of sound;
It cannot be,--it
is,--it is,--
A hat is going round!
No! Pay the dentist when he leaves
A fracture in your jaw,
And pay
the owner of the bear
That stunned you with his paw,
And buy the
lobster that has had
Your knuckles in his claw;
But if you are a portly man,
Put on your fiercest frown,
And talk
about a constable
To turn them out of town;
Then close your
sentence with an oath,
And shut the window down!
And if you are a slender man,
Not big enough for that,
Or, if you
cannot make a speech,
Because you are a flat,
Go very quietly and
drop

A button in the hat!
THE TREADMILL SONG

THE stars are rolling in the sky,
The earth rolls on below,
And we
can feel the rattling wheel
Revolving as we go.
Then tread away,
my gallant boys,
And make the axle fly;
Why should not wheels go
round about,
Like planets in the sky?
Wake up, wake up, my duck-legged man,
And stir your solid pegs

Arouse, arouse, my gawky friend,
And shake your spider