Classic Poem

ADDRESSED TO A LADY .

La couronne de bluets.

From Heaven I come, and my visit there
Saves many a tear of ours:
O Beauty, imprudent, tho' chaste, beware,
And play no more with flowers!
Yesterday, mark me, with eye made dim
By wine and paunch well rounded,
Jove leered on our world; and it seemed to him
That crowns too much abounded.

" This is coming it far too strong, " he cried,
As he gave his wrath full head:
" What! another brow with a crown supplied,
When the maker of Kings is dead!
At that brow my thunder-bolt must be hurled;
The weak at last I'll free:
King's subjects, and subjects kings, in the world
I've sworn some day to see! "

His council that moment I enter — (where
May not the rhymer stand?)
He's apt to take aim without who goes there? —
But I beard him, hat in hand
" Jove! they are false, thy balance and weights;
From thy decree I appeal:
Has thy Court, whence Justice eternal dates,
No Keeper of the Seal?

" Bring thy spectacles, ancient Sire, to bear
On the head we've crowned below:
There candor smiles; the soft eye there
Can but kind looks bestow
Since the deaf amongst us find thy thunder
Dumb, when thou send'st it down —
Wilt thou, O Jove, rend nought asunder
But a poor blue-bottle crown? "

" Ho, ho! " quoth he, " I was rash — elsewhere
My heated bolt I'll throw "
" Throw on; but aim not at our world just there;
Aim above it, or else below! "
Proud to have had in your cause such luck,
From the turrets of Heaven I sped:
As for Jove — I heard that his bolt had struck
A brace of pigeons dead.