WHOE'ER has seen upon the human face
The yellow jaundice and the jaundice black,
May form a notion of old Colonel Case
With nigger Pompey waiting at his back.
Case-as the case is, many times with folks
From hot Bengal, Calcutta, or Bombay,
Had tint his tint, as Scottish tongues would say,
And showed two cheeks as yellow as eggs' yolks.
Pompey, the chip of some old ebon block,
In hue was like his master's stiff cravat,
And might indeed have claimed akin to that,
Coming, as he did, of an old black stock.
Case wore the liver's livery that such
Must wear, their past excesses to denote,
Like Greenwich pensioners that take too much,
And then do penance in a yellow coat.
Pompey's, a deep and permanent jet dye,
A stain of nature's staining-one of those
We call fast colors-merely, I suppose,
Because such colors never go or fly.
Pray mark this difference of dark and sallow,
Pompey's black husk, and the old Colonel's yellow.
The Colonel, once a pennyless beginner,
From a long Indian rubber rose a winner,
With plenty of pagodas in his pocket,
And homeward turning his Hibernian thought,
Deemed Wicklow was the very place that ought
To harbor one whose wick was in the socket.
Unhappily for Case's scheme of quiet,
Wicklow just then was in a pretty riot,
A fact recorded in each day's diurnals,
Things Case was not accustomed to peruse,
Careless of news;
But Pompey always read these bloody journals,
Full of Killmany and of Killmore work,
The freaks of some O'Shaunessy's shillaly,
Of mornings frays by some O'Brien Burke,
Or horrid nightly outrage by some Daly ;
How scums deserving of the Devil's ladle,
Would fall upon the harmless scull and knock it,
And if he found an infant in the cradle,
Stern Rock would hardly hesitate to rock it ;-
In fact, he read of burner and of killer,
And Irish ravage, day after day,
Till, haunting in his dreams, he used to say
That "Pompey could not sleep on Pompey's Pillar."
Judge then the horror of the nigger's face
To find with such impressions of that dire land-
That Case-his master-was a packing case
For Ireland!
He saw, in fearful reveries arise,
Phantasmagorias of those dreadful men
Whose fame associate with Irish plots is,
Fitzgeralds-Tones-O'Connors-Hares-and then
"Those Emmets," not so "little in his eyes"
As Doctor Watts's!
He felt himself piked, roasted-carved and hacked,
His big black burly body seemed in fact
A pincushion for Terror's pins and needles—
Oh, how he wished himself beneath the sun
Of Afric-or in far Barbadoes-one
Of Bishop Coleridge's new black beadles.
With broken peace and broken English choking,
As black as any raven, and as croaking,
Pompey rushed in upon his master's sight,
Plumped on his knees, and clasped his sable digits,
Thus stirring Curiosity's sharp fidgets-
"O Massa!-Massa!-Colonel!-Massa Case:--
Not
go to Ireland !-Ireland dam bad place;
Dem take our bloods-dem Irish--every drop-
Oh why for Massa go so far a distance
To have him life?"Here Pompey made a stop
Putting an awful period to existence.
"Not go to Ireland-not to Ireland, fellow,
And murdered-why should I be murdered, Sirrah?” Cried Case, with anger's tinge upon his yellow—; Pompey, for answer, pointing in a mirror
The Colonel's saffron, and his own japan,-
"Well, what has that to do-quick-speak outright, boy?"
"O Massa"-(so the explanation ran)
"Massa be killed-'cause Massa Orange Man,
And Pompey killed-'cause Pompey not a White Boy!"
THERE'S NO ROMANCE IN THAT!
"So while I fondly imagined we were deceiving my relations, and flattered myself that I should outwit and incense them all; behold, my hopes are to be crushed at once, by my aunt's consent and approbation, and I am myself the only dupe. But here, Sir. -here is the picture!"-LYDIA LANGUISH.
O DAYS of old, O days of Knights,
Of tourneys and of tilts,
When love was balked and valor stalked
On high heroic stilts—
Where are ye gone?-adventures cease,
The world gets tame and flat-
We've nothing now but New Police-
There's no Romance in that!
I wish I ne'er had learned to read,
Or Radcliffe how to write;
That Scott had been a boor on Tweed,
And Lewis cloistered quite !
Would I had never drank so deep
Of dear Miss Porter's vat;
I only turn to life, and weep-
There's no Romance in that!
No Bandits lurk-no turbaned Turk
To Tunis bears me off
I hear no noises in the night
Except my mother's cough-
No Bleeding Spectre haunts the house,
No shape but owl or bat,
Come flitting after moth or mouse
There's no Romance in that!
I have not any grief profound,
Or secrets to confess,
My story would not fetch a pound
For A. K. Newman's press;
Instead of looking thin and pale,
I'm growing red and fat,
As if I lived on beef and ale-
There's no Romance in that!
It's very hard, by land or sea
Some strange event I court,
But nothing ever comes to me
That's worth a pen's report:
It really made my temper chafe,
Each coast that I was at,
I vowed, and railed, and came home safe-
There's no Romance in that!
The only time I had a chance
At Brighton one fine day,
My chestnut mare began to prance,
Took fright, and ran away;
Alas! no Captain of the Tenth
To stop my steed came pat;
A Butcher caught the rein at length—
There's no Romance in that!
Love-even love-goes smoothly on
A railway sort of track-
No flinty sire, no jealous Don!
No hearts upon the rack;
No Polydore, no Theodore-
His ugly name is Mat,
Plain Matthew Pratt and nothing more-
There's no Romance in that!
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