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The world is full of orphans: firstly, those
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Who are so in the strict sense of the phrase
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(But many a lonely tree the loftier grows
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Than others crowded in the forest's maze);
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The next are such as are not doomed to lose
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Their tender parents in their budding days,
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But merely their parental tenderness,
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Which leaves them orphans of the heart no less.
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The next are 'only children', as they are styled,
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Who grow up children only, since the old saw
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Pronounces that an 'only' 's a spoilt child.
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But not to go too far, I hold it law
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That where their education, harsh or mild,
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'Transgresses the great bounds of love or awe,
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The sufferers, be't in heart or intellect,
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Whate'er the cause are orphans in effect.
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But to return unto the stricter rule
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(As far as words make rules), our common notion
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Of orphans paints at once a parish school,
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A half-starved babe, a wreck upon life's ocean,
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A human (what the Italians nickname) 'mule',
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A theme for pity or some worse emotion;
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Yet, if examined, it might be admitted
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The wealthiest orphans are to be more pitied.
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Too soon they are parents to themselves; for what
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Are tutors, guardians, and so forth, compared
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With Nature's genial genitors, so that
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A child of Chancery, that Star Chamber ward
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(I'll take the likeness I can first come at),
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Is like a duckling by Dame Partlett reared
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And frights, especially if 'tis a daughter,
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The old hen by running headlong to the water.
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There is a commonplace book argument,
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Which glibly glides from every vulgar tongue
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When any dare a new light to present:
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'If you are right, then everybody's wrong.'
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Suppose the converse of this precedent
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So often urged, so loudly and so long:
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'If you are wrong, then everybody's right.'
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Was ever everybody yet so quite?
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Therefore I would solicit free discussion
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Upon all points, no matter what or whose,
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Because as ages upon ages push on,
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The last is apt the former to accuse
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Of pillowing its head on a pincushion,
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Heedless of pricks because it was obtuse.
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What was a paradox becomes a truth or
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A something like it, as bear witness Luther.
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The sacraments have been reduced to two
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And witches unto none, though somewhat late
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Since burning aged women (save a few,
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Not witches, only bitches, who create
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Mischief in families, as some know or knew,
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Should still be singed, but slightly let me state)
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Has been declared an act of inurbanity,
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Malgé Sir Matthew Hale's great humanity.
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Great Galileo was debarred the sun,
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Because he fixed it, and to stop his talking
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How earth could round the solar orbit run,
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Found his own legs embargoed from mere walking.
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The man was well nigh dead, ere men begun
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To think his skull had not some need of caulking,
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But now it seems he's right, his notion just,
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No doubt a consolation to his dust.
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Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates—but pages
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Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
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With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
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Who in his lifetime each was deemed a bore.
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The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages;
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This they must bear with and perhaps much more.
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The wise man's sure when he no more can share it, he
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Will have a firm post-obit on posterity.
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If such doom waits each intellectual giant,
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We little people in our lesser way
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To life's small rubs should surely be more pliant,
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And so for one will I, as well I may.
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Would that I were less bilious—but oh fie on't!
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Just as I make my mind up everyday
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To be a totus teres stoic, sage,
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The wind shifts and I fly into a rage.
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Temperate I am, yet never had a temper;
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Modest I am, yet with some slight assurance;
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Changeable too, yet somehow idem semper;
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Patient, but not enamoured of endurance;
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Cheerful, but sometimes rather apt to whimper;
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Mild, but at times a sort of Hercules furens;
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So that I almost think that the same skin
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For one without has two or three within.
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Our hero was in canto the sixteenth
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Left in a tender moonlight situation,
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Such as enables man to show his strength
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Moral or physical On this occasion
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Whether his virtue triumphed, or at length
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His vice—for he was of a kindling nation—
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Is more than I shall venture to describe,
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Unless some beauty with a kiss should bribe.
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I leave the thing a problem, like all things.
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The morning came, and breakfast, tea and toast,
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Of which most men partake, but no one sings.
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The company, whose birth, wealth, worth have cost
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My trembling lyre already several strings,
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Assembled with our hostess and mine host.
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The guests dropped in, the last but one, Her Grace,
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The latest, Juan with his virgin face.
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Which best is to encounter, ghost or none,
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'Twere difficult to say, but Juan looked
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As if he had combated with more than one,
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Being wan and worn, with eyes that hardly brooked
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The light that through the Gothic windows shone.
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Her Grace too had a sort of air rebuked,
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Seemed pale and shivered, as if she had kept
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