1826.] 
Punch and Judy. 403 
Yes ! politicians, jobbers, quacks, projectors 
(I too am one) of grand associations ; 
Attorneys to the same, and rich Directors— 
All gamblers with your high denominations— 
Geographers of mind, or brain dissectors, 
I leave you in your several occupations, 
To float, or sink, or struggle in the stream, 
While I return te Punch, a betterntheme ! 
V’ye said that to the fair Italian clime, 
Florence, or Naples, or the Eternal City, 
Punch bears us, and to that old merrier time, 
Fraught with gay jest, or love-recording ditty, 
Unlike our calculating age sublime, 
Dull ;—sage, and money-getting, more’s the pity ;— 
For should we lose them, who shall look again 
Upon the like of that immortal twain ? 
Back, too, he bears us to the lovely morn 
Of life, ere life’s true value has been found: 
When joy from no external cause is born, 
But springs within us, rather than around ;— 
All happy, as the bird upon the thorn, 
Or colt, that frolics o’er the grassy ground; 
Or little fish, that leaps in stream or bay, 
At noon, or evening, of a sultry day. 
At least for me thesé peerless pranks restore— 
The very hour, when first my boyish feet 
Trod London’s stones ;—when wondering more and more 
I paced each long interminable street, 
Yet still untired, unsated, could explore 
From dawn to dusk ; and deemed time’s wing too fleet, 
Amid those thousand marvels of that time, 
Beasts, panoramas, wax-work, pantomime. 
With more, through which the eye delighted ranged, 
And thee, illustrious Punch, among the rest. 
And though dark intervening years have changed 
Mest of the thoughts and feelings then impressed, 
From these my heart cannot be all estranged, 
More than from him, who made a child his guest— 
His friend, yet scarcely will remember yet 
Those kindnesses, which I can ne’er forget. 
For they to him were as habitual things, 
Done often and unvalued ;—but J glowed 
With life’s first warmth, when every arrow wings 
Its way into the heart, and finds abode 
With all the grief or joy, whiche’er it brings.— 
Should I forget. the favours thus bestowed, 
Should I not lave the man who loved me then, 
Methinks I were unfit to herd with men !— 
Yet, though our nature bids such feelings dwell 
Long in the heart with undiminished pow’r; 
Though lightest things have oft a potent spell 
To raise the spirits of each vanished hour :— 
Perchance, these deeper thoughts accord not well 
With antics and wild whims, that hannt the tower 
Whence Punch, the great magician, seen on high, 
Instils the langhter, and dispels the sigh. ‘ 
$F 2 
