The Humourous Poetry of the English Language

414
From morn to eve, till Drury Lane
Leaped like a roebuck from the plain?
Ropes rose and sunk, and rose again,
And nimble workmen trod;
To realize bold Wyatt's plan
Rushed may a howling Irishman;
Loud clattered many a porter-can,
And many a ragamuffin clan,
With trowel and with hod.
Drury revives! her rounded pate
Is blue, is heavenly blue with slate;
She "wings the midway air," elate,
As magpie, crow, or chough;
White paint her modish visage smears,
Yellow and pointed are her ears.
No pendant portico appears
Dangling beneath, for Whitbread's shears
Have cut the bauble off.
Yes, she exalts her stately head;
And, but that solid bulk outspread,
Opposed you on your onward tread,
And posts and pillars warranted
That all was true that Wyatt said,
You might have deemed her walls so thick,
Were not composed of stone or brick,
But all a phantom, all a trick,
Of brain disturbed and fancy-sick,
So high she soars, so vast, so quick!
DRURY'S DIRGE.
[BY LAUBA MATILDA.--REJECTED ADDRESSES.]
HORACE SMITH.
"You praise our sires: but though they wrote with force,
Their rhymes were vicious, and their diction coarse:
We want their STRENGTH, agreed; but we atone
For that and more, by SWEETNESS all our own"--GIFFORD.