Classic Poem

XXI.

Bagged from a cabin on the skirt
Of thy morass soft Grannyfert!
First came a cottier's half-starved Tom,
Whom famine had deducted from;
Deducted till it seemed through fast,
That eight of his nine lives were past.
But soon his cat-star crying " eat, "
Relented in the shape of meat;
New sleeked his coat, replumped his flesh,
And gave him his lost lives afresh.
Then like the amorous Turk he saw,
Though only a one-tailed Bashaw,
Around his wawling presence swell
A huge seraglio stocked pell-mell,
With black, white, tabby, tortoiseshell.
Yet when about the rat they ranged,
Their natural feline fury changed;
The rat no symptom showed of fright,
The cats forgot to pounce or bite;
Each claw was shut, and all the furred,
As if in love and pity, purred.
Thus wolves before our mother's vice
Caressed the kid in paradise;
The lamb thus calmly cropt the plain,
Beneath the peaceful lion's mane;
While on the branch that bloomed above,
The hawk sat billing with the dove.

XXII.

Thrice through the zodiac's signs the sun
His annual wheeling race had run,
While kept the water-fiend its pace,
Haunting the knight from place to place.
Worn with the pest, on travel bent,
From rocky Blarneygig he went;
Traversed the sea; all Europe viewed;
Still, still the cursed rat pursued!
No change it manifested; save
That which the various nations gave.
In France, thy dressing-room, oh, World!
Its whiskers seemed more smartly curled;
Through Italy a mellower note
Squeaked, like a quaver, from its throat;
Among the Germans, all the day
It looked not sober though not gay,
And gravely studied to maintain
A haughty toss of nose in Spain.
As hopeless, home, the chief at last
O'er Scotia's barren Highlands past,
The reptile shedding half its hair,
Grew hide-bound till its breech was bare;
And scratched, while hunger marked its jaws,
Incessantly between the claws.

XXIII.

The chief (his breast with sorrow big)
Re-entered Castle Blarneygig.
" Bother! " he cried, " 'tis all in vain,
Lady of the O'Shaughnashane!
As I return, returns my foe!
We've made the tour of Europe though.
But to what purpose did I roam?
What, Judy, what have I brought home?
Like many a travelled fool no doubt,
No more nor less than I took out! "
Next morn he rose to chase the deer
In the thick tangles of Dunleer.
'Twere long to tell who in the mud
Was left, chin-deep, at Gruddrybrud;
What horse or rider at Kilcleck
Now broke his wind and now his neck;
Enough that when the lengthened shade
Of oaks had vanished from the glade,
When a chill, sullen, starless night
Was pressing dew-dript evening's flight,
Dismounted in a luckless hour
(Far from his own or any tower)
Upon a wide and swampy plain,
Wandered the lone O'Shaughnashane.
" How am I worn, " he sighed, " Och hone!
With melancholy to the bone! "
Then sat him down upon a stone,
To while the hours till morning-tide,
With the rat perking by his side.
'Twas then he heard — no minstrel nigh —
A Kearnine twang his lullaby.


SONG
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XXIV.

Huntsman, sleep! the deer has jogged
From thy hounds, not worth the chiding;
Huntsman, sleep! thy steed lies bogged,
Glandered, spavined, not worth riding.
Huntsman, 'tis thy fate to own
Leather lost and empty belly!
Stick thy bottom on the stone
Till the rat shall squeak reveille!

Huntsman, snore! for up thou'rt done;
And before the rising sun,
To awaken and assail ye
Will the reptile squeak reveille.

XXV.

Light lingering still upon the ground,
The wanderer cast his eyes around.
The reptile, with the chase o'ertoiled,
Into a hairy ball was coiled,
And slept upon a heathery stump
Spite of the hail that beat its rump.
While, turning from the storm, it dozed,
Its rear was to the knight exposed.
" Now, by the powers! " he uttered low
" I've taken by surprise the foe!
Och, divil! have I, five years past,
Caught you here napping now at last? "
He tiptoed eager through the hail,
And seized his torment by the tail.
The vermin squeaked — Oh, well away!
Should vermin talk in future day,
No rhetoric could better teach
A rat to make its dying speech.
Against the stone he dashed its head,
And saw his plague at length lie dead.
Its blood, while man runs mortal race,
Tempest nor time will e'er efface.
E'en now the antiquary pores
O'er the grey stone, and there explores
(What cannot antiquaries see!)
Marks that ne'er were nor e'er will be.
He traces on a barbarous strand
A fair denuded; in her hand
A scroll, with two O s following T,
And after that discovers LEY,
Then W, H, A, double G,
Which put together make full sure
To lovers of the old obscure
A shipwrecked maid dead many a year,
Still grasping all she held most dear,
And cast on history a light
Touching the Lady and the Knight.