1832. J Ode to Colonel Jones. 55 



Last but, oh ! far from least forgive the whim 



There's Davy Jones ! 



Renowned Welch wonder king of whales and sharks 

 Upsetter of armadas, and of arks 



Terror of chimney-corner crones, 

 Whose absent husbands never learnt to swim ! 

 And here, dear Colonel, though mankind are brothers, 

 Exists the difference 'twixt thee and others ; 

 For thou while all are doomed when life is ended, 

 Monarchs and mayors, to descend to him 



Thou art from him descended. 



II. 



Oh ! Colonel Jones, 

 Let me, ere yet I touch on the calamity 



That wakes these moans, 

 Reflect, in admiration and in amity, 

 On the full radiance of thy rare career 



From year to year. 



I speak not of thy fame among the fighters ; 

 For thou hast been for better things designed 

 A colonel of the marching hosts of mind j 



Thy sole ambition 



To rank among the orators and writers, 

 And to excite thy parish to petition. 

 Full many a patriot speech, and many a swarm 

 Of resolutions, hast thou put together, 



In Palace-yard, or Lincoln's-inn 

 Collecting crowds unchecked by Whigs or weather ; 

 Long ere the people had a chance to win 

 Ere yet had risen, o'er the Tory storm, 



The rainbow of Reform ! 

 Though not, it seems, at present an M.P., 



Thou hast been, and shalt be. 

 Pancras and Finsbury shall plead in vain, 

 And Holborn fail to grasp thee for its member ; 



For thou, oh ! Jones, 



Art Mary-le-bone's, 



Before the thirty-first of next December. 

 Thy many-column'd letters in the " Times," 

 Crowning the glories of thy useful reign, 

 Paint the results of perished courtiers' crimes ; 

 And shew how ministers may live again 

 In brothers, mothers, uncles, cousins, sisters, 



And other blisters. 



And can it be, that after all these labours, 

 You've formed the dire intention, 

 Which twenty papers every morning mention, 

 Of giving up your body for dissection, 

 That you and usefulness may still be neighbours ? 

 Of leaving for the use of Mr. Hume, 

 The glory (gratis) of a public tomb, 

 And all the sweets of muffled drums and tabors ! 

 Your skeleton denying to St. Paul, 

 To hang, in horrid honours, on the wall 

 (Oh ! for some fifty notes of interjection !) 



Of Surgeons' Hall ! 



III. 

 Too generous and disinterested Colonel ! 



Why, all this foolish nation 

 Deemed thee successor to thy Sea-relation, 

 The heir- apparent of the great Infernal 



