Punch (42.1862)

162

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [April 19, 1862.

“ A CONSUMMATION DEVOUTLY TO BE WISHED.”

Mrs. Colley Wobble. “ H’m, so they are going to Tax People who make
their own Beer, are they ? Then 7 don’t Brew any more ! ”

INDIGNATION MAKING VERSES.

We have received a very indignant letter from an
American Correspondent, who states that in his opinion
Poets have no right to compose verses which will not lend
themselves to paraphrase. He has been trying, he says,
all the morning, (and with his coat off,) to fit the Laureate’s
Balaklava Poem to the subject of the Advance of the Grand
Army of the Potomac, and in a perfect fury he encloses
this specimen, as all that he has been able to make of it.
He considers that the conduct of the English at Balaklava
in being only Six Hundred, and that of the Laureate in
not making verses that would do for the far more glorious
Six Hundred Thousand, are perfectly offensive, and he
threatens that when the South is put down, we shall hear
more about it. Meantime we hasten to try and assuage
his fierv wrath by printing his lines.

^THE VALLEY OF MUD.

Into the Valley of Mud
Went the Six Hundred Thousand,

All of them awfully

Splashing their Trousers.

Officers on the right of them,

Officers on the left of them.

Officers in the middle of them,

Blustered and thundered;

But in that Virginian muck
Stiffly each hero stuck,

And all at M'Clellan’s pluck
Gloriously wondered.

In they went, on they went.

Eat sides and thin bones,

Till they sunk over shoes,

And indeed over their shin bones.

Here our Correspondent, apparently in the same case as
the heroes he celebrates, sticks. We can but print his
verses.

No Foundation for Alarm.

The Thames Embankment is to be built out of City
Coals. This proves that there is no apprehension of the
Board of Works ever setting the Thames on fire. Don’t
you see it ? We can’t help that.

Zodiacal Sign for the British Eleet.—The Ram.

PITY THE SORROWS OF A POOR PYTHONESS.

’Od rot the British public, thanks to whom my eggs have rotted,

Not one of all my brood preserved, except the one they’ve potted !

And that’s a half-grown thing, that gives impression false as may be
Of the true length, breadth, and thickness of a new-born Python baby.

Zoology’s a great thing, but humanity’s a greater;

Just let me get a chance, some day, of squeezing Dii. Sclater !

The coil that I’d keep about him, some small return should be,

Eor the coil that he’s been keeping these eight months about me.

We snakes have sensibilities, and when we’re in the state
A Pyl lioness would fain be in who loves her Python mate,

We’vea horror of intrusion, from such scientific noddies,

As your A.S.S. and fellows of other learned bodies.

All a snake-mother asks is peace to warn and range and rank its
Precious ovarian treasure, safe and snug, beneath the blankets.

But if folks keep pulling, poking, peeping, prying, fiddle-faddling,

It will end, as it has ended, sure as eggs is eggs, in addling.

Think what it is, when wrapped in dreams of Pythonacles in embryon,
(With this vile English spring, too, drawing chilly and Novembry on,)
To have one’s blanket whipped off by a fellow, come to get his
Reading off of one’s vital heat, from his Zambra and Negretti’s.*

Or when lapped in trance lethargic, and beatific vision.

Of tropic suns and tropic skies, and jungle-heat Elysian,

With sudden chill to wake, and feel British north-easter blowin’

Round one’s bare coils, unblanketted, to please Professor Owen.

The end of all is, I lie here, unblessed—of all my batch

Not so much as one Pythonacle brought to a prosperous hatch !

* The great thei-mometer-makers.

And all because those fellows—those soi-disant men of science,

On time and kindly nature are too clever for reliance.

Like boys, who when they’ve sowed a seed, still of its progress doubting.
Will pull it up from time to time, to see if it is sprouting.

So you in your anxiety to see my Pythons small,

Have poked and pulled and fingered me, till you’ve got none at all.

It serves you right, of course it does— but think of me forlorn,

Who captive here see chilling night succeed to sunless morn;

Think of the thrill that swept me through—as the electric fire
Pulses, with speed that mocks the light along the cable-wire,

When first I felt the stirrings blend, beneath my scaly skin,

That told me of the mother’s work at length begun within;

Think of my pride, my happiness, when, guerdon of my toils,

A hundred clustered eggs lay warm beneath my loving coils!

And now—hard-hearted fellows—but what use np these revealings ?

As if you men would credit a Pythoness with feelings !

Sermons in stones there may be, e’en a slate turn pulpit-prater,

But in a slate who’d seek for heart, and, still more in a Sclater ?

Hey, Preston, Begone !

Preston has been electing a Member; that is, both sides have been
bribing and treating their hardest, with the understanding that neither
was to prosecute, and the longest purse, the Tory one, has won. And
the place calls itself “ Proud Preston.” Soil. Let it retain the name,
and be treated, Parliamentarily, as a doctor treats proud flesh.

Difference betwixt (Sea) Chips of an Old (Land) Block
by Land and Sea.—Coles’s Ironsides in 1862 and Cromwell’s
Ironsides in 1642.