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,
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 wander'd 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 was 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 eomes 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 watchmen 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!
́S strange how like a very dunce,
Man with his bumps upon his sconce,
Has lived so long, and yet no know-
ledge 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 grinders,
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.
At last great Dr. Gall bestirs him-
I don't know but it might be Spurzheim-
Tho' native of a dull and slow land,
And makes partition of our Poll-land,
At our Acquisitiveness guesses,
And all those necessary nesses
|