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Title: Lament For The Loss Of Lord Bathurst's Tail
Author: Thomas Moore [
More Titles by Moore]
Lament for the Loss of Lord Bathurst's Tail.[1]
All _in_ again--unlookt for bliss!
Yet, ah! _one_ adjunct still we miss;--
One tender tie, attached so long
To the same head, thro' right and wrong.
Why, Bathurst, why didst thou cut off
That memorable tail of thine?
Why--as if _one_ was not enough--
Thy pig-tie with thy place resign,
And thus at once both _cut_ and _run_?
Alas! my Lord, 'twas not well done,
'Twas not, indeed,--tho' sad at heart,
From office and its sweets to part,
Yet hopes of coming in again,
Sweet Tory hopes! beguiled our pain;
But thus to miss that tail of thine,
Thro' long, long years our rallying sign--
As if the State and all its powers
By tenancy _in tail_ were ours--
To see it thus by scissors fall,
_This_ was "the unkindest _cut_ of all!"
It seemed as tho' the ascendant day
Of Toryism had past away,
And proving Samson's story true,
She lost her vigor with her _queue_.
Parties are much like fish, 'tis said--
The tail directs them, not the head;
Then how could _any_ party fail,
That steered its course by Bathurst's tail?
Not Murat's plume thro' Wagram's fight
E'er shed such guiding glories from it,
As erst in all true Tories sight,
Blazed from our old Colonial comet!
If you, my Lord, a Bashaw were,
(As Wellington will be anon)
Thou mightst have had a tail to spare;
But no! alas! thou hadst but one,
And _that_--like Troy, or Babylon,
A tale of other times--is gone!
Yet--weep ye not, ye Tories true--
Fate has not yet of all bereft us;
Though thus deprived of Bathurst's _queue_,
We've Ellenborough's _curls_ still left us:--
Sweet curls, from which young Love, so vicious,
His shots, as from nine-pounders, issues;
Grand, glorious curls, which in debate
Surcharged with all a nation's fate,
His Lordship shakes, as Homer's God did,[2]
And oft in thundering talk comes near him;
Except that there the _speaker_ nodded
And here 'tis only those who hear him.
Long, long, ye ringlets, on the soil
Of that fat cranium may ye flourish,
With plenty of Macassar oil
Thro' many a year your growth to nourish!
And ah! should Time too soon unsheath
His barbarous shears such locks to sever,
Still dear to Tories even in death,
Their last loved relics we'll bequeath,
A _hair_-loom to our sons for ever.
NOTES:
[1] The noble Lord, as is well known, cut off this much-respected appendage on his retirement from office some months since.
[2] "Shakes his ambrosial curls, and gives the nod."--Pope's _Homer_.
[The end]
Thomas Moore's poem: Lament For The Loss Of Lord Bathurst's Tail
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