The Humourous Poetry of the English Language

114
Keep up the jest, and mingle in the lay--
Such Monarchs best our free-born humors suit,
But Despots must be stately, stern, and mute.
This Solimaun, Serendib had in sway--
And where's Serendib? may some critic say--
Good lack, mine honest friend, consult the chart,
Scare not my Pegasus before I start!
If Rennell has it not, you'll find, mayhap,
The isle laid down in Captain Sinbad's map--
Famed mariner! whose merciless narrations
Drove every friend and kinsman out of patience,
Till, fain to find a guest who thought them shorter,
He deign'd to tell them over to a porter--
The last edition see, by Long and Co.,
Rees, Hurst, and Orme, our fathers in the Row.
Serendib found, deem not my tale a fiction--
This Sultaun, whether lacking contradiction--
(A sort of stimulant which hath its uses,
To raise the spirits and reform the juices,
--Sovereign specific for all sorts of cures
In my wife's practice, and perhaps in yours),
The Sultaun lacking this same wholesome bitter,
Of cordial smooth for prince's palate fitter--
Or if some Mollah had hag-rid his dreams
With Degial, Ginnistan, and such wild themes
Belonging to the Mollah's subtle craft,
I wot not--but the Sultaun never laugh'd,
Scarce ate or drank, and took a melancholy
That scorn'd all remedy profane or holy;
In his long list of melancholies, mad,
Or mazed, or dumb, hath Burton none so had.
Physicians soon arrived, sage, ware, and tried,
As e'er scrawl'd jargon in a darken'd room;
With heedful glance the Sultaun's tongue they eyed,
Peep'd in his bath, and God knows where beside,
And then in solemn accent spoke their doom,
"His majesty is very far from well."
Then each to work with his specific fell;