Nor Jersey lightning lights their woes who hear his griding strain;
Nor Jersey cider balms their brains—they never smile again.
"A t'ief of the wurrld," Sir Finnegan bold of Ireland him would call;
And said ye, "strike the blasted lyre," Sir Fin would whack Sir Ball,
With a double quadrille of toadies true, a gruesome companie,
All into the field on donkeys two called Morse and Marsh rode he.
He stood on the backs of his brace of hacks, in equitation foul;
And either donkey wore what seemed a human jobbernowl.
And he in a horse's harness good was blithesomely arrayed,
For such he had sold and gotten him gold, and it was his trade!
So on he lhad put his equine suit, and said: "Come death or wrack,
At least we'll die, like the Thane of Fife, with harness on our back."
By the donks' support, their necks athwart, a huge bull-fiddle did show,
And rantingly and dauntingly Sir Ball did rosin the bow.
O never before on such a sight the bardic sun did shine!
"This beats me hollow," said bright Apollo, and stared with all his eyne.
IV.
It was the donkeys Morse and Marsh that first the silence broke,
And like Sir Balaam's ass the twain not only brayed but spoke.
And though an angel stood in their path, and said "Beware this day,"
They spoke not like that sapient beast, but quite their natural way.
With slubberdegullion bribble-brabble, seventy pages long;
They said "Sir Ball alone devised and sings the lady's song.
Strike up, Sir Ball, thy dulcet voice will deep conviction bring!"—
And then with horrible cruelty, Sir Ball did play and sing.
Bull-fiddle and leathery-brazen lungs did blare the lady's lay,
All intermixt with a song of spooks and Tophet's goblins gay.
And with "Mother, O mother!" the dissonant staves were all one mutual cry—
"Mother, O mother, my mother, I blubber, I holler, I howl, I sigh—
The storm in my breast, mother, won't let me rest, mother; clouded and sabled I weep;
Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to wake, mother, rock me to wake and to sleep!"
And have ye heard the love-lorn cat, Sir Tom, when he miauls and meows?—
And have ye heard the sleepless dog in the yard, with his wild bow-wows?
And have ye heard the cats and dogs convolved in war together?
Conceit ye then of the tuneful strain Sir Ball did bellow and blether!
Jaw-cracking metrification dire, and rhythm that rends the bowels:
Hoarse, horrible mutual massacre of consonants and vowels;
Calathumpia's dins and calliope's yells, all sorts of aural wrong,
All stridor's mad menagerie let loose, were in that song.
And "Go it, go it, noble poet!" the donkey fied did bray;
And "Hooray! our pote this pome he wrote!" the toadies all did say.
But into his ears at the earliest blast Sir Public jammed his thumbs,
And skedaddled as fast as the guiltiest wretch who knows the devil comes.
Apollo fled and hid his head in the realm of the dead below—
The sweet and silent pallid realm where discords cannot go.
The deaf they chuckled; dismay, despair convulsed each thing that hears;
The stones were happy; the corn resolved it never would come to ears!
V.
It was the race of Boobies, whom I hate with hatred sore,
