Citizen of the World

Oh, very reverend Dean and Chapter,Exhibitors of giant men,Hail to each surplice-back’d adapterOf England’s dead, in her stone den!Ye teach us properly to prizeTwo-shilling Grays, and Gays, and Handels,And, to throw light upon our eyes,Deal in Wax Queens like old wax candles.

Oh, reverend showmen, rank and file,Call in your shillings, two and two;March with them up the middle aisle,And cloister them from public view.Yours surely are the dusty dead,Gladly ye look from bust to bust,And set a price on each great head,And make it come down with the dust.

Oh, as I see you walk alongIn ample sleeves and ample back,A pursy and well-order’d throng,Thoroughly fed, thoroughly black!In vain I strive me to be dumb,--You keep each bard like fatted kid,Grind bones for bread like Fee-faw-fum!And drink from skulls as Byron did!

The profitable Abbey isA sacred ‘Change for stony stock,Not that a speculation ’tis--The profit’s founded on a rock.Death and the Doctors in each naveBony investments have inurn’d,And hard ’twould be to find a graveFrom which “no money is returned!”

Here many a pensive pilgrim, broughtBy reverence for those learnëd bones,Shall often come and walk your shortTwo-shilling fare upon the stones--Ye have that talisman of WealthWhich puddling chemists sought of oldTill ruin’d out of hope and health--The Tomb’s the stone that turns to gold!

Oh, licensed cannibals, ye eatYour dinners from your own dead race,Think Gray, preserved--a “funeral meat,”And Dryden, devil’d--after grace,A relish;--and you take your mealFrom Rare Ben Jonson underdone,Or, whet your holy knives on Steele,To cut away at Addison!

Oh say, of all this famous age,Whose learnëd bones your hopes expect,Oh have ye number’d Rydal’s sage,Or Moore among your Ghosts elect?Lord Byron was not doom’d to makeYou richer by his final sleep--Why don’t ye warn the Great to takeTheir ashes to no other heap!

Southey’s reversion have ye got?With Coleridge, for his body, madeA bargain?--has Sir Walter Scott,Like Peter Schlemihl, sold his shade?Has Rogers haggled hard, or soldHis features for your marble shows,Or Campbell barter’d ere he’s cold,All interest in his “bone repose?”

Rare is your show, ye righteous men!Priestly Politos,--rare, I ween;But should ye not outside the DenPaint up what in it may be seen?A long green Shakspeare, with a deerGrasp’d in the many folds it died in,--A Butler stuff’d from ear to ear,Wet White Bears weeping o’er a Dryden!

Paint Garrick up like Mr. Paap,A Giant of some inches high;Paint Handel up, that organ chap,With you, as grinders, in his eye;Depict some plaintive antique thing,And say th’ original may be seen;--Blind Milton with a dog and stringMay be the Beggar o’ Bethnal Green!

Put up in Poet’s Corner, nearThe little door, a platform small;Get there a monkey--never fear,You’ll catch the gapers, one and all!Stand each of ye a Body Guard,A Trumpet under either fin,And yell away in Palace Yard“All dead! All dead! Walk in! Walk in!”

(But when the people are inside,Their money paid--I pray you, bidThe keepers not to mount and rideA race around each coffin lid.--Poor Mrs. Bodkin thought, last year,That it was hard--the woman clacks--To have so little in her ear--And be so hurried through the Wax!--)

“Walk in! two shillings only! come!Be not by country grumblers funk’d!--Walk in, and see th’ illustrious dumb,The Cheapest House for the defunct!”Write up, ’twill breed some just reflection,And every rude surmise ’twill stop--Write up, that you have no connection(In large)--with any other shop!

And still, to catch the Clowns the more,With samples of your shows in Wax,Set some old Harry near the doorTo answer queries with his axe.--Put up some general begging-trunk--Since the last broke by some mishap,You’ve all a bit of General Monk,From the respect you bore his Cap!