Verses

Mr Hopner

By Saint Jago! by Jingo! (Greek Miss, for the nine)
Here is Monday, and this but the second good line,
Tho’ I feel all agog in the teachest to shine.

Take that vile suet pudding, and take me the wine hence,
From swilling and stuffing there’s like to come fine sense.
’Las-a-day! I have brought my poor noble to nine-pence

’Tis with me and my Muse as it is with the times,
She complains of my taxes, I still call for rhymes,
But I take all that clink-little nice about chimes.

I remember the said “splendid anticipations”
A rash promise is mother to all the vexations!
Tho’ I ne’er saw much comfort ’mongst my relations.

Get two chairmen, no stay — get but one, with a knot!
Yes, I’ll send the young lady my brains hot and hot,
For with sack and dead weight ’tis not easy to trot.

’Tis a burden which I do not bear very well,
So at least my acquaintance all seems me to tell,
And I bless my small wit that e’en so much can spell.

But a fig for fine wit, and a fig too for brains,
There’s a chit two feet two, in her noddle contains,
Twenty ounces of each for my poor twenty grains.

Lady, by not too proud of this compliment, pray,
When a youth, like me, flatters, he’s naught else to say,
And still when beaux praise you, believe — ’tis their way.

You perhaps may not take my advice very kind —
I was ever too fond of thus speaking my mind
A good reason, ’tis said, why my fob’s so ill lin’d.

To the parish, my wife, poor dear dumpling, will come,
With my gigantic brood, Messrs. Fe, Fa, and Fum,
And my shrimp, like Miss Porden, the size of my thumb.

Don’t you think, Lady Owl — in your turn to be free —
Should you treasure this nonsense, and thus turn the key,
The poor tea-chest will sigh for its inmate bohea?

Did such trash ever come from the ports of Chin Long?1
The poor sense mighty green, and the humour souchang,
While the lines run as harsh as a great copper gong.

Out Alas! I’ll take care how I Pegasus saddle —
Tho’ the world’s might business is more fiddle faddle
And grave judges rise only, to hang — or to twaddle!

Tho’ I vow not to write, I am no stubborn thing,
And what if I’m no Owl, I’ve a bit of a wing,
And when you cast sheeps-eyes, I shall fly up and sing.

Sep 2nd 1809
Charles Street


  1. The Emperor Long-chin.