"God help thee, said I, but I'll let thee out, cost what it will: so I turned about the cage to get to the door."-STERNE.
'Tis strange, what awkward figures and odd capers
Folks cut, who seek their doctrine from the papers;
But there are many shallow politicians,
Who take their bias from bewilder'd journals-
Turn state-physicians,
And make themselves fools'-caps of the diurnals.
One of this kind, not human, but a monkey,
Had read himself at last to this sour creed-
That he was nothing but Oppression's flunkey,
And man a tyrant over all his breed.
Of niggers whipt, or over-trampled weavers,
But he applied their wrongs to his own seed,
And nourish'd thoughts that threw him into fevers;
His very dreams were full of martial beavers,
And drilling Pugs, for liberty pugnacious,
To sever chains vexatious:
In fact, he thought that all his injur'd line
Should take up pikes in hand, and never drop 'em
Till they had cleared a road to Freedom's shrine,— Unless perchance the turn-pike men should stop 'em.
Pacing one day beside St. Clement Danes,
It came into his brains
To give a look in at the Crown and Anchor;
Where certain solemn sages of the nation
Were at that moment in deliberation
How to relieve the wide world of its chains,
Pluck despots down,
Whitee- as well as blackee-man-cipation.
Pug heard the speeches with great approbation,
And gaz'd with pride upon the Liberators;
To see mere coal-heavers
Such perfect Bolivars
Waiters of inns sublim'd to innovators,
And slaters dignified as legislators—
Small publicans demanding (such their high sense
Of liberty) an universal license-
And pattern-makers easing Freedom's clogs―
The whole thing seem'd
The smallest demagogues as great as Gogs!
Pug, with some curious notions in his noddle,
Walk'd out at last, and turn'd into the Strand,
To the left hand,
Conning some portions of the previous twaddle,
And striding with a step that seem'd design'd
To represent the mighty March of Mind,
Instead of that slow waddle
Of thought, to which our ancestors inclin'd-
No wonder, then, that he should quickly find
He stood in front of that intrusive pile,
Where Cross keeps many a kind
And free-born animal, in durance vile
A thought that stirr'd up all the monkey-bile!
The window stood ajar
It was not far,
Nor, like Parnassus, very hard to climb-
The hour was verging on the supper-time,
And many a growl was sent through many a bar.
Meanwhile Pug scrambled upward like a tar,
And soon crept in,
Unnotic'd in the din
Of tuneless throats, that made the attics ring
With all the harshest notes that they could bring ;
For like the Jews,
Wild beasts refuse,
In midst of their captivity-to sing.
Lord! how it made him chafe,
Full of his new emancipating zeal,
To look around upon this brute-bastille,
And see the king of creatures in a safe!
The desert's denizen in one small den,
Swallowing slavery's most bitter pills-
A bear in bars unbearable. And then
The fretful porcupine, with all its quills
Imprison'd in a pen!
A tiger limited to four feet ten;
And, still worse lot,
A leopard to one spot!
An elephant enlarg'd,
But not discharg'd;
(It was before the elephant was shot ;)
A doleful wanderoo, that wandered not;
An ounce much disproportion'd to his pound.
Pug's wrath wax'd hot
To gaze upon these captive creature's round;
Whose claws-all scratching-gave him full assurance They found their durance vile of vile endurance.
He went above-a solitary mounter
Up gloomy stairs—and saw a pensive group
Of hapless fowls—
Cranes, vultures, owls,
In fact, it was a sort of Poultry-Compter,
Where feather'd prisoners were doom'd to droop:
Here sat an eagle, forc'd to make a stoop,
Not from the skies, but his impending roof;
And there aloof,
A pining ostrich, moping in a coop;
With other samples of the bird creation,
All cag'd against their powers and their wills,
And cramp'd in such a space, the longest bills
Were plainly bills of least accommodation.
In truth, it was a very ugly scene
To fall to any liberator's share,
To see those winged fowls, that once had been
Free as the wind, no freer than fixed air.
His temper little mended,
Pug from this Bird-cage Walk at last descended Unto the lion and the elephant,
To see all nature's Free List thus suspended,
And beasts depriv'd of what she had intended.
They could not even prey
A hardship always reckon'd quite prodigious.
Thus he revolv'd-
To give them freedom, civil and religious.
That night there were no country cousins, raw
From Wales, to view the lion and his kin:
The keeper's eyes were fix'd upon a saw;
The saw was fix'd upon a bullock's shin:
Meanwhile with stealthy paw,
Pug hastened to withdraw
The bolt that kept the king of brutes within.
Now, monarch of the forest! thou shalt win
Precious enfranchisement-thy bolts are undone;
Thou art no longer a degraded creature,
But loose to roam with liberty and nature;
And free of all the jungles about London—
All Hampstead's heathy desert lies before thee !
Methinks I see thee bound from Cross's ark,
Full of the native instinct that comes o'er thee,
And turn a ranger
Of Hounslow Forest, and the Regent's Park-
Thin Rhodes's cows-the mail-coach steeds endanger,
And gobble parish watchman after dark:-
Methinks I see thee, with the early lark,
Stealing to Merlin's cave-(thy cave.)—Alas,
That such bright visions should not come to pass !
Alas, for freedom, and for freedom's hero!
Alas, for liberty of life and limb!
For Pug had only half unbolted Nero,
When Nero bolted him!
'Tis strange how like a very dunce,
Man with his bumps upon his sconce,
Has lived so long, and yet no knowledge he
Has had, till lately, of Phrenology—
A science that by simple dint of
Head-combing he should find a hint of,
When scratching o'er those little pole-hills,
The faculties throw up like mole-hills ;—
A science that, in very spite
Of all his teeth, ne'er came to light,
For though he knew his skull had grinder,
Still there turn'd up no organ finders,
Still sages wrote, and ages fled,
And no man's head came in his head-
Not even the pate of Erra Pater,
Knew aught about its pia mater.
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