Without hoping a hundred-fold profit to make:

Where the “rich man,” the “miser,” “aristocrat,” “snob,”

Has poured out his thousands for Charity’s sake,

I’ll lay down my pen, and have “Nothing to Say.”

I shall not describe the Spirit of Cant,

Of popular humbug, and vulgar rant,

And tell how he looks in a tangible form,

And give the length of his horns and claws,

The spread of his wings, the width of his jaws,

And detail the other proportions grim,

Which belong to a powerful demon like him.

Go and look at the melodramatic stage,

When a “spectacle” piece is all the rage;

And there, in the midst of some “property” storm,

While the sheet-iron thunder is rattling its best,

And the rosin lightning, and all the rest

Of the elements are, for some tragedy-reason,

Making the “awfullest gale of the season—”

See, at the sound of the prompter’s tap,

The fiend come up through the “Vampyre trap;”

 Prev. P 7/19 next