37
“Peace! at our threshhold, dunce! by all the Muses!
We mean to throw some light upon your tail
You say your Indian ape can run in nooses.
Primeval forests, too, in Hindostan!
That, and some other things, won’t do, my bantling!
Not even in a poem, no, my man!
I stand abashed; my cheek shame’s purple mantling.”
Here theologians, plump, red-cheeked and hoary,
Too, veiled themselves in supra-mundane glory:
If orthodoxy murmur, to disarm her
I say expressly, these apes worshipped Brahma.
There Apery’s Brachmans, all in robes and fringes,
In spite of fasts grew wondrous fat and blooming,
And proved Law, Science, Art, in brief resuming,
Let’s say the All on their own Vedas hinges.
Of course these Vedas, too, must be protected,
So Apes a University erected:
There Ape-professors took a world of trouble
For every trick and trait to be the double
Of Halle and Leipzig’s learned, to a hair
As Halle and Leipzig snuff, they snuffed and grumbled,
While Apedom’s beadle Deutschland’s best out-Bumbled
With gorgeous staff and cocked hat rich and rare.
Art, letters too, by no means retrograded
With ruffled locks about a brow intensive
And hand in bosom, geniuses paraded
Their “welt-schmerz” on a cheek as sickly pensive,
According to great patterns, ate, drank, slumbered,
And many an apish Byron, apeland numbered.
Here artists, too, in velveteens disported,
With broad-brimmed hat on nape of neck, much courted.
Well skilled they were to wield their blessed palettes
