Sumner Surrey;
When aldermen taste eloquence
Or bricklayers champagne;
When common law is common sense,
I may be yours again!
When learned judges play the beau,
Or learned pigs the tabor;
When traveller Bankes beats Cicero,
Or Mr. Bishop Weber;
When sinking funds discharge a debt,
Or female hands a bomb;
When bankrupts study the _Gazette_,
Or colleges _Tom Thumb_;
When little fishes learn to speak,
Or poets not to feign;
When Dr. Geldart construes Greek,
I may be yours again!
When Pole and Thornton honor cheques,
Or Mr. Const a rogue;
When Jericho's in Middlesex,
Or minuets in vogue;
When Highgate goes to Devonport,
Or fashion to Guildhall;
When argument is heard at Court,
Or Mr. Wynn at all;
When Sydney Smith forgets to jest,
Or farmers to complain;
When kings that are are not the best,
I may be yours again!
When peers from telling money shrink,
Or monks from telling lies;
When hydrogen begins to sink,
Or Grecian scrip to rise;
When German poets cease to dream,
Americans to guess;
When Freedom sheds her holy beam
On Negroes, and the Press;
When there is any fear of Rome,
Or any hope of Spain;
When Ireland is a happy home,
I may be yours again!
When you can cancel what has been,
Or alter what must be,
Or bring once more that vanished scene,
Those withered joys to me;
When you can tune the broken lute,
Or deck the blighted wreath,
Or rear the garden's richest fruit,
Upon a blasted heath;
When you can lure the wolf at bay
Back to his shattered chain,
To-day may then be yesterday--
I may be yours again!
_W.
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