Composed in a Major Key

“Arma virosque cano.”

Wake, Heav’nly Muse! to hear the tuneless yell

Of Infidelity and Israel:

Mortonian mists th’ embattled field befog,

Whilst Carlo barks from shelt’ring synagogue.

Beware, Conservative, the hostile two;

The learned atheist and the vengeful Jew.

With frothing mouth and fact-destroying lance,

Observe the radicals in pomp advance.

Their thoughts, their speech, and e’en their press are free

(For folly oft appears as liberty).

With Whitman’s word their soaring sails they fire,

And cast upon the foe their native mire.

Impetuous Isaacson, in roaring rage,

Mixes the marks of ev’ry previous age.

The quaint Dan Chaucer and the good Queen Bess,

To his blind hate an equal age confess,

While heedless Raleigh nods to Handel’s chords,

As Lovelace, from his prison-cell, applauds;

Melodious Herrick’s ghost, with boundless scope,

Lives on and wears the periwig of Pope.

Nurs’d thus in Chaos, it were vain to dream

That captious Charles could pen a scholar’s theme;

His sneering “Honi soit qui mal y pense”

He fathers on the cynic court of France!

Yet let us not at his crude scribbling smile,

When he but boasts of his unfashion’d style;

He laughs at learning, and leads on the day

When scholarship will earn the name of play!

Drunk with his freedom, worldly he indites,

And now “abeisance” for “obeisance” writes!

Since art and letters have no pow’r to please,

In politics his nerves he seeks to ease:

Here is his Oriental fancy daz’d,

With din a thousand demagogues have rais’d.

Amid the noise the loudest shrieks he heeds,

And gobbles, hook and line, the rabble’s creeds.

“All men are equal! Let us have no kings!”

(How tritely thus the well-worn sentence rings.)

“All races are alike! Despite their hues

Raise hook-nos’d octaroons and woolly Jews!

Let Afric ape with Aryan combine,

And sink the white man in a mongrel line!”

Thus the mad Isaacson, whose rabid pace

Would plunge a mighty nation in disgrace.

His empty freedom and his negro lore

He seeks to lay at fair Columbia’s door;

But let him not our dignity degrade:

Columbia was by sturdy Saxons made!

Whilst the brave Semite loud of freedom cants,

Against this freedom he, forgetful, rants:

Eternal licence for himself he pleads,

Yet seeks restraint for his opponents’ deeds;

With the same force that at oppression rails,

He’d bar The Jeffersonian from the mails!

When outrag’d Georgia from the law breaks free,

And hangs some murd’rer from a friendly tree,

Should not our hero with his praises fill

The echoing air, and sing the people’s will?

Blush, sweet Consistency! Judaea’s child,

With hot hysteria, waxes monstrous wild;

Apes Don Quixote with his fuming mind,

Whilst Goodwin, like poor Sancho, rides behind.

One vile assassin and his proper fate,

To Isaacson can damn a sovereign state!

But tho’ with fury fill’d, his valour shrinks,

When on the sterner side of life he thinks.

However natural, whate’er their cause,

With sobbing sigh he mourns the wicked wars.

Careless of honour, void of saving sense,

He begs the land to banish its defence:

Like Christian saint to turn the other cheek,

And injuries from bolder neighbours seek.

Too proud to fight, he hopes for war to cease,

And welcomes insult as the price of peace!

From peace to luxury the step is slight,

And Venus reigns when Mars withdraws his might.

Thus the soft Isaacson, to war oppos’d,

Finds wondrous charms in Paphian lines disclos’d;

Tho’ duly shock’d by riotous Vanbrugh,

He reads the artful Whitman thro’ and thro’;

And when the sober try his taste to cure,

He shouts that vice, if unasham’d, is pure!

When crafty Whitman admiration draws

With loftier flights, and rugged, conscious flaws,

The willing Charles dilates his eager throat,

And swallows at a gulp each faulty note:

He thrives on discord, and the witless lay

To him grows great if form be cast away.

Thus did old Walt the force of folly see,

And gilded brazen trash with novelty!

So vanish, Isaacson! Declaim no more,

But turn thy fancy to rabbinic lore.

Sound now the trumpets, and awake the drums,

For matchless Morton in his chariot comes!

The Dean of Darkness, wrecker of the church,

Crowing with scorn from his exalted perch!

Great Antichrist! The friend of Reason’s rule,

Who looks for reason in the churlish fool;

Who fondly dreams a rabble can be sway’d

By fine abstractions saints have disobey’d!

But search not Morton for the vulgar fault,

Nor scan his page for awkward phrase or halt:

Whate’er your talent, and howe’er you feel,

He forms a foeman worthy of your steel.

His steps, tho’ wild, a subtle charm attends,

And art to him unnumber’d graces lends.

When he insults, his polish soothes the pain,

And victims, undisturb’d, as friends remain.

Thus privileged, great Morton’s force is spent

On those who favour, while they still dissent.

He lauds the negro, and the negro shines

As long as we sit rapt o’er Morton’s lines;

When the stern rays of Truth our minds awake,

We weep that such a sage should e’er mistake.

So venerated Morton rules the skies,

And pleases when he means to patronise!

Shall we complain when such a pen appears

To shake our doctrines or excite our fears?

Shall Morton’s thunder rouse vindictive ire,

Or shall we smile, uninjur’d, and admire?

Thus from the window, undisturb’d and warm,

We safely view the grandeur of the storm:

The raging blast, sent earthward to destroy,

Is watch’d and study’d with artistic joy.

Loud-thund’ring Morton, shaking land and sea,

parts Socialism from raging anarchy.

In dumb discretion we his word admit;

One’s but the brink; the other is the pit!

If such dark regions tyranny could own,

Well might they seat King Morton on their throne!

And now farewell! With unconfounded mien

We watch the mighty atheist quit the scene.

Soon will his shafts to other targets fly,

As some evangelist attracts his eye.

Tho’ like a bull at us he plunges one day,

Tomorrow he’ll be goring Billy Sunday!