Classic Poem

THE INVENTOR OF THE PATENT PERRYAN PEN .

I.

O! Patent, Pen-inventing Perryan Perry!
Friend of the Goose and Gander,
That now unplucked of their quill-feathers wander,
Cackling, and gabbling, dabbling, making merry,
About the happy Fen,
Untroubled for one pennyworth of pen,
For which they chant thy praise all Britain through,
From Goose-Green unto Gander-Cleugh! —

II.

Friend to all Author-kind —
Whether of Poet or of Proser, —
Thou art composer unto the composer
Of pens, — yea, patent vehicles for Mind
To carry it on jaunts, or more extensive
Perry grinations through the realms of Thought;
Each plying from the Comic to the Pensive,
An Omnibus of intellectual sort!

III.

Modern Improvements in their course we feel;
And while to iron-railroads heavy wares,
Dry goods, and human bodies, pay their fares,
Mind flies on steel,
To Penrith, Penrhyn, even to Penzance.
Nay, penetrates, perchance,
To Pennsylvania, or, without rash vaunts,
To where the Penguin haunts!

IV.

In times bygone, when each man cut his quill,
With little Perryan skill,
What horrid, awkward, bungling tools of trade
Appeared the writing implements home-made!
What Pens were sliced, hewed, hacked, and haggled out,
Slit or unslit, with many a various snout,
Aquiline, Roman, crooked, square, and snubby,
Stumpy and stubby;
Some capable of ladye-billets neat,
Some only fit for Ledger-keeping Clerk,
And some to grub down Peter Stubbs his mark,
Or smudge through some illegible receipt;
Others in florid caligraphic plans,
Equal to Ships, and wiggy Heads, and Swans!

V.

To try in any common inkstands, then,
With all their miscellaneous stocks,
To find a decent pen,
Was like a dip into a lucky box:
You drew, — and got one very curly,
And split like endive in some hurly-burly:
The next, unslit, and square at end, a spade;
The third, incipient pop-gun, not yet made;
The fourth a broom; the fifth of no avail,
Turned upwards, like a rabbit's tail;
And last, not least, by way of a relief,
A stump that Master Richard, James, or John,
Had tried his candle-cookery upon,
Making " roast-beef! "

VI.

Not so thy Perryan Pens!
True to their M's and N's,
They do not with a whizzing zigzag split,
Straddle, turn up their noses, sulk, and spit,
Or drop large dots,
Huge fullstop blots,
Where even semicolons were unfit.
They will not frizzle up, or, broom-like, drudge
In sable sludge —
Nay, bought at proper " Patent Perryan " shops,
They write good grammar, sense, and mind their stops;
Compose both prose and verse, the sad or merry —
For when the Editor, whose pains compile
The grown-up Annual, or the Juvenile,
Vaunteth his articles, not women's, men's,
But lays " by the most celebrated Pens, "
What means he but thy Patent Pens, my Perry?

VII.

Pleasant they are to feel!
So firm! so flexible! composed of steel
So finely tempered — fit for tenderest Miss
To give her passion breath,
Or Kings to sign the warrant stern of death —
But their supremest merit still is this,
Write with them all your days,
Tragedy, Comedy, all kinds of plays —
(No Dramatist should ever be without 'em) —
And, just conceive the bliss, —
There is so little of the goose about 'em,
One's safe from any hiss!

VIII.

Ah! who can paint that first great awful night,
Big with a blessing or a blight,
When the poor Dramatist, all fume and fret,
Fuss, fidget, fancy, fever, funking, fright,
Ferment, fault-fearing, faintness — more f's yet:
Flushed, frigid, flurried, flinching, fitful, flat, —
Add famished, fuddled, and fatigued, to that;
Funeral, fate-foreboding — sits in doubt,
Or rather doubt with hope, a wretched marriage,
To see his Play upon the stage come out;
No stage to him! it is Thalia's carriage,
And he is sitting on the spikes behind it,
Striving to look as if he didn't mind it!

IX.

Witness how Beazley vents upon his hat
His nervousness, meanwhile his fate is dealt:
He kneads, moulds, pummels it, and sits it flat,
Squeezes and twists it up, until the felt
That went a Beaver in, comes out a Rat!
Miss Mitford had mis-givings, and in fright,
Upon Rienzi's night,
Gnawed up one long kid glove, and all her bag,
Quite to a rag.
Knowles has confessed he trembled as for life,
Afraid of his own " Wife; "
Poole told me that he felt a monstrous pail
Of water backing him, all down his spine, —
" The ice-brook's temper " — pleasant to the chine! —
For fear that Simpson and his Co. should fail.
Did Lord Glengall not frame a mental prayer,
Wishing devoutly he was Lord knows-where?
Nay, did not Jerrold, in enormous drouth,
While doubtful of Nell Gwynne's eventful luck,
Squeeze out and suck
More oranges with his one fevered mouth,
Than Nelly had to hawk from North to South?
Yea, Buckstone, changing color like a mullet,
Refused, on an occasion, once, twice, thrice,
From his best friend, an ice,
Lest it should hiss in his own red-hot gullet!

X.

Doth punning Peake not sit upon the points
Of his own jokes, and shake in all his joints,
During their trial?
'Tis past denial.
And does not Pocock, feeling, like a peacock,
All eyes upon him turn to very meacock?
And does not Planche, tremulous and blank,
Meanwhile his personages tread the boards,
Seem goaded by sharp swords,
And called upon himself to " walk the plank? "
As for the Dances, Charles and George to boot,
What have they more
Of ease and rest, for sole of either foot,
Than bear that capers on a hotted floor?

XI.

Thus pending — does not Mathews, at sad shift
For voice, croak like a frog in waters fenny? —
Serle seem upon the surly seas adrift? —
And Kenny think he's going to Kilkenny? —
Haynes Bayley feel Old ditto, with the note
Of Cotton in his ear, a mortal grapple
About his arms, and Adam's apple,
Big as a fine Dutch codling, in his throat?
Did Rodwell, on his chimney-piece, desire
Or not to take a jump into the fire?
Did Wade feel as composed as music can?
And was not Bernard his own Nervous Man?
Lastly, don't Farley, a bewildered elf,
Quake at the Pantomime he loves to cater,
And ere its changes ring, transform himself? —
A frightful mug of human delf?
A spirit-bottle — empty of " the cratur " ?
A leaden-platter ready for the shelf?
A thunderstruck dumb-waiter?

XII.

To clench the fact,
Myself, once guilty, of one small rash act,
Committed at the Surrey
Quite in a hurry,
Felt all this flurry,
Corporal worry,
And spiritual scurry,
Dram-devil — attic curry!
All going well,
From prompter's bell,
Until befell
A hissing at some dull imperfect dunce —
There's no denying,
I felt in all four elements at once!
My head was swimming, while my arms were flying,
My legs for running — all the rest was frying!

XIII.

Thrice welcome, then, for this peculiar use
Thy pens so innocent of goose!
For this shall Dramatists, when they make merry,
Discarding Port and Sherry,
Drink — " Perry! "
Perry, whose fame, pennated, is let loose
To distant lands,
Perry, admitted on all hands,
Text, running, German, Roman,
For Patent Perryans approached by no man!
And when, ah, me! far distant be the hour!
Pluto shall call thee to his gloomy bower,
Many shall be thy pensive mourners, many!
And Penury itself shall club its penny,
To raise thy monument in lofty place;
Higher than York's, or any son of War;
Whilst Time all meaner effigies shall bury,
On due pentagonal base,
Shall stand the Parian, Perryan, perriwiged Perry,
Perched on the proudest peak of Penman Mawr!