Page:Two Mock Epics (Hanuman and Tantum Religio), Lyrics, Post Meridian Verse, The Turret Captain's Toast and other Verses.pdf/28

 We’ll into pourpoints, petticoats and trowsers;

Ay, promptly, too, and humanwise comport us.

Our faith firm pinned on human dress, reliance

On that shall soon conduct us to the van,

O’er stepping-stones of morals, art and science—

The glorious Church of brotherhood and man!”

The king has ceased; around, the apish clusters

Also hang motionless. Like meteor showers,

Those grand conceptions blind their puny powers,

Those glittering vistas—unimagined lustres.

Then, by degrees, the rustling storm prevails,

And wonder thrills those clumps of heads and tails.

A hundred brandished hands through mid air flutter,

A hundred polls go swagging up and down,

A hundred figures dance and clutch and splutter,

A hundred faces gibber, grin and frown;

But as to what they think, a dismal hum is

The only oral clue—all mute and mum is;

And many a puzzled Chatham keeps his seat,

And scratches both his ears with both his feet.

At length an aged ape of aspect sour,

Grey eld with silver threads his scarce fur raying,

His face a map of wrinkles, stubborn, dour,

A mango fruit in one fist, th’ other playing

With the blue honors of his beard, and tightly

An aery tendril with the third embracing

Among the tropic creeper’s interlacing,

Wherein, as on a swing, he dangled lightly,

Now stretched his fourth hand to the monarch breeched,

And thus for rhetoric’s crown of laurels reached:

“I say out plain; I can’t assent, great sire,

That men than we—nay, we than men stand higher,