Classic Poem

The crowned heads, since the Conquest, who ruled England's nation,
Met on one of our coasts for a jollification;
At midnight these ghosts had a supper in state,
So the yeomen-guard spectres were ordered to wait.
Tol de rol, &c.

Cynthia shone out above them, to scatter the dark,
And they sat on the sands above high-water mark;
For they knew when Canute said the tide should be stopped,
How finely his majesty's shoes had been sopped!

The defunct kings and queens had a worm-eaten train
Of the statesmen, wits, heroes, and toasts of their reign:
Queen Elizabeth Burleigh and Leicester brought in,
Charles the Second made Rochester come with Nell Gwynn.

The chair, Norman Billy, the Conqueror claimed,
For extinguishing candles at eight o'clock famed:
" But we ghosts, " observed Billy, " don't go to bed soon,
So I shan't toll a curfew to put out the moon. "

King Rufus desired that no venison they'd put on,
For when hunting it last he was shot dead as mutton;
" No lampreys, " cried Henry the First, " for alack!
They killed me about seven hundred years back. "

King Stephen said nought, and if truth were confessed,
Of his right to be king the least said was the best;
Besides, how unfit on a throne to sit down,
When he reckoned his breeches too dear at a crown.

When Saint Thomas a Becket began to say grace
King Henry the Second put on a long face;
Caeur-de-Lion roared out, " Who's to carve while I eat?
For I cut up a Saracen better than meat. "

Cried John to his Barons, " We'll have now, my lords,
The best Magnum Bonum this country affords. "
" Our best Magnum Bonum, my liege, " they all said,
" Is your own Magna Charta; " but John shook his head.

Henrys, Edwards, and Richards, the last of them humpy,
Fuddled noses together, though some appeared grumpy;
For the Lancashire ghosts tippled red wine all night,
While the York apparitions touched nothing but white .

" For the Roses, " said Henry the Seventh, " I entwined them;
And like port mixed with sherry, in marriage I joined them. "
" Marriage, " Henry the Eighth said, " so blesses our lives,
That I never beheaded but two of my wives. "

King Edward the Sixth with the rest couldn't sup,
For a ghost of sixteen was too young to sit up;
But Queen Mary was there, in our annals a blot,
Great Queen Bess, and pedantic King Jamie the Scot.

Charles the First — but the dew falling thick on the shore,
Seemed the tears of our Isle for his murder of yore;
Charles the Second wept too, nought could comfort afford him,
Till a bumper (like General Monk) had restored him.

A card of excuse came from Jamie the Second,
But the party had scarce on his company reckoned;
For paler than lemons he quitted the throne,
And the Oranges instantly made it their own.

The Third William stood up, and sans circumlocution,
To the memory drank of our famed Revolution;
Queen Anne gave her Marlborough, old England's fame
No hero raised higher, — till Wellington came.

As the spirits broke up, ere the sun shot his rays,
To the shades of three Georges they gave loud huzzas;
And the white cliffs of Britain re-echoed the strain,
Of God bless George the Fourth! and long, long may he reign!