1826. ] 
ad 
aig "\ 
Punch and Judy. 405 
But whether, as such folks will have it, thou, 
Oh Punch, hast dwindled since thine earlier day, 
Not having lived then too, as well as now, 
I cannot take upon myself to say: 
And the same rule shall follow, I avow, 
In other things I have not seen, nor may, 
As once they were; nor therefore can compare, 
Save by some faint false light, with what they are, 
Dogs, horses, men, we’re told by bard and proser, 
From bad to worse have always been declining. 
But if ’twere so, the question seems a pozer, 
How mid our darkness could one ray be shining? 
Must not the world, like some old nerveless dozer, 
With dotage ang infirmities be pining ?— 
But does it pi I think not, nor at any rate 
Shall swell the stfpid cry about “ degenerate.” 
I, in my time, have seen some revolutions ; 
And in my time may still see hundreds more— 
Subverted thrones—new-fangled constitutions— 
Though age not yet my brow has silvered o’er: 
For frequent as a Mussulman’s ablutions 
Have moral earthquakes shaken many a shore, 
And stars, that seemed designed for countless years, 
To meteors turned, and tumbled from their spheres. 
Punch is unchanged, unmenaced.—I have known 
Men lifted by a nation’s loud applause 
Almost to Heaven,—and ere a year was flown 
Reviled and hated for as little cause. 
Abroad—at home—might specimens be shown— 
But I love not to break decorum’s laws. 
They were but followed while they were a rarity, 
But Punch enjoys a deathless popularity. 
My soul flies back rapt in a “ frenzy fine ;” 
And with imagination’s kindling eye 
Proud kings and nobles,* who in armour shine, 
And courtly dames in splendour’s richest dye, 
Plantagenets, and Tudors, and the line 
Of the unhappy Stuarts, floating by, 
Elizabeth—and Scotland’s lovely queen, 
Who was too much a woman—all are seen : 
And all are gone: yea, dynasties have set 
Like suns declining in the fiery west, 
Never to rise :—but thou remainest yet, 
Thou king of nonsense, thou eternal jest ! 
Thee all have known, and none, who know, forget, 
Recalling still with pleasure unreprest ;— 
Thou happiest ape, and emblem of humanity, 
Thou standing satire on ambition’s vanity. 
* Perchance, the poet, inhis vein historical 
Requires not truth exactly for his pages :— 
But with so much of hist’ry allegorical, 
Or dark, could he clear up the mist of ages ? 
Could he pretend to be a perfect oracle A 
For solving doubts which have perplexed the sages ?— 
He only knows, that nought the heart inflames, 
More than a string of old heroic names. | ~ 
Pe 
Bougersdichius. 
