THE WISE MEN OF GOTHAM.

By S. T. C., Esq.,* PROFESSOR OF MYSTICISM.

ΣΚΙΑΣ ΟΝΑP. PINDAR.

In a bowl to sea went wise men three,
On a brilliant night of June:

They carried a net, and their hearts were set
On fishing up the moon.

The sea was calm, the air was balm,

Not a breath stirred low or high,

And the moon, I trow, lay as bright below,
And as round as in the sky.

The wise men with the current went,

Nor paddle nor oar had they,

And still as the grave they went on the wave,
That they might not disturb their prey.

Far, far at sea, were the wise men three,
When their fishing-net they threw ;
And at the throw, the moon below
In a thousand fragments flew.

The sea was bright with a dancing light
Of a million million gleams,

Which the broken moon shot forth as soon

As the net disturbed her beams.

They drew in their net: it was empty and wet,

And they had lost their pain,

Soon ceased the play of each dancing ray,
And the image was round again.

Three times they threw, three times they drew,
Aud all the while were mute;

And evermore their wonder grew,
Till they could not but dispute.

Their silence they broke, and each one spoke
Full long, and loud, and clear;

A man at sea their voices three

Full three leagues off might hear.

The three wise men got home again

To their children and their wives:

But, touching their trip, and their net's vain dip, They disputed all their lives.

The wise men three could never agree,

Why they missed the promised boon;

They agreed alone that their net they had thrown, And they had not caught the moon.

I have thought myself pale o'er this ancient tale,
And its sense I could not ken;

But now I see that the wise men three
Were paper money men.

"Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub,"

Is a mystic burthen old,

Which I've pondered about till my fire went out, And I could not sleep for cold.

I now divine each mystic sign,

Which robbed me oft of sleep,

Three men in a bowl, who went to troll,
For the moon in the midnight deep.

Three men were they who science drank
From Scottish fountains free;

The cash they sank in the Gotham bank,
Was the moon beneath the sea.

The breaking of the imaged moon,
At the fishing-net's first splash,
Was the breaking of the bank as soon
As the wise men claimed their cash.

The dispute which lasted all their lives,
Was the economic strife,

Which the son's son's son of every one
Will maintain through all his life.

The son's son's sons will baffled be,
As were their sires of old;

But they'll only agree, like the wise men three,
That they could not get their gold.

And they'll build systems dark and deep,
And systems broad and high;

But two of three will never agree
About the reason why.

And he who at this day will seek
The Economic Club,

Will find at least three sages there,
As ready as any that ever were
To go to sea in a tub.

CHORUS OF BUBBLE BUYERS.

"When these practisers come to the last decoction, blow, blow, puff, puff, and all flies in fumo. Poor wretches! I rather pity their folly and indiscretion, than their loss of time and money for these may be restored by industry: but to be a fool born is a disease incurable."-BEN JONSON'S Volpone.

:

OH! where are the hopes we have met in the morning,
As we hustled and bustled around Capel Court?

When we laughed at the croakers that bade us take warn

ing,

Who once were our scorn, and now make us their sport.

Oh! where are the regions where well-paid inspectors.
Found metals omnigenous streaked and embossed?

So kindly bought for us by honest directors,

Who charged us but three times as much as they cost.

Oh! where are the riches that bubbled like fountains,
In places we neither could utter nor spell,
A thousand miles inland, 'mid untrodden mountains,
Where silver and gold grew like heath and blue-bell?

Oh! where are the lakes overflowing with treasure?
The gold-dust that rolled in each torrent and stream?
The mines that held water by cubic-mile measure,
So easily pumped up by portable steam?

That water our prospects a damp could not throw on ;
We had only a million-horse power to prepare,
Make a thousand-mile road for the engine to go on,

And send coals from Newcastle to boil it when there.

Oh! where are the bridges to span the Atlantic?
Oh! where is the gas to illumine the poles?
They came to our visions; that makes us half-frantic :
They came to our pockets; that touches our souls.

Oh! there is the seat of most exquisite feeling:

The first pair of nerves to the pocket doth dive: A wound in our hearts would be no time in healing, But a wound in our pockets how can we survive?

Now curst be the projects, and curst the projectors,
And curst be the bubbles before us that rolled,
Which, bursting, have left us like desolate spectres,
Bewailing our bodies of paper and gold.

For what is a man but his coat and his breeches,
His plate and his linen, his land and his house?
Oh! we had been men had we won our mock riches,
But now we are ghosts, each as poor as a mouse.

But shades as we are, we, with shadowy bubbles,

When the midnight bell tolls, will through Capel Court glide,

And the dream of the Jew shall be turmoils and troubles, When he sees each pale ghost on its bubble astride.

And the lecturing Scots that upheld the delusion,
By prating of paper, and wealth, and free trade,
Shall see us by night, to their awe and confusion,
Grim phantoms of wrath that shall never be laid.

"The Scot, to rival realms a mighty bar,
Here fixed his mountain home: a wide domain,
And rich the soil, had purple heath been grain :
But what the niggard ground of wealth denied,
From fields more blest his fearless arm supplied."

THE Scotts, Kerrs, and Murrays, and Deloraines all,
The Hughies o' Hawdon, and Wills-o'-the-Wall,
The Willimondswicks, and the hard-riding Dicks,
Are staunch to the last to their old border tricks;

LEYDEN.

Wine flows not from heath, and bread grinds not from stone, They must reeve for their living, or life they'll have none.

When the Southron's strong arm with the steel and the law,
Had tamed the moss-troopers, so bonny and braw;
Though spiders wove webs in the rusty sword-hilt,
In the niche of the hall which their forefathers built;
Yet with sly paper-credit and promise to pay,

They still drove the trade which the wise call convey.t

They whitewashed the front of their old border fort;
They widened its loop-holes, and opened its court;
They put in sash-windows where none were before,
And they wrote the word "BANK" o'er the new-painted door;
The cross-bow and matchlock aside they did lay,

And they shot the proud Southron with promise to pay.

Sir Walter Scott.

+ Steal! odious is the word-convey the wise it call.-Pistol.