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Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, January 9, 1892
by: Various
Categories:
Description:
Excerpt
ON A NEW YEARLING.
(Second Week.)
Second Week. Little 1892 grows rapidly, and begins to look about him.My fire was low; my bills were high;
My sip of punch was in its ladle;
The clarion chimes were in the sky;
The nascent year was in its cradle.
In sober prose to tell my tale,
'Twas New Year's E'en, when, blind to danger,
All older-fashioned nurses hail
With joy "another little stranger."
The glass was in my hand—but, wait,
Methought, awhile! 'Tis early toasting
With pæans too precipitate
A baby scarce an outline boasting:
One week at least of life must flit
For me to match it with its brothers—
I'll wager, like most infants, it
Is wholly different from others.
He frolics, latest of the lot,
A family prolific reckoned;
He occupies his tiny cot,
The eighteen-hundred-ninety-second!
The pretty darling, gently nursed
Of course, he lies, and fondly petted!
The eighteen-hundred-ninety-first
Is not, I fancy, much regretted.
You call him "fine"—he's great in size,
And "promising"—there issue from his
Tough larynx quite stentorian cries;
Such notes are haply notes of promise.
Look out for squalls, I tell you; soft
And dove-like atoms more engage us;
Your fin-de-siècle child is oft
Loud, brazen, grasping, and rampageous.
You bid me next his eyes adore;
So "deep and wideawake," they beckon;
We've suffered lately on the score
Of "deep and wideawake," I reckon.
You term me an "unfeeling brute,"
A "monster Herod-like," and so on—
You may be right; I'll not dispute;
I'll cease a brat's good name to blow on.
Who'll read the bantling's dawning days?—
Precocious shall he prove, and harass
The world with inconvenient ways
And lisped conundrums that embarrass?
(Such as Impressionists delight
To offer each æsthetic gaper,
And faddists hyper-Ibsenite
Rejoice to perpetrate on paper?)
Or, one of those young scamps perhaps
Who love to rig their bogus bogies,
And set their artful booby-traps
For over-unsuspicious fogies?
Or haply, only commonplace—
A plodding sort of good apprentice,
Who does his master's will with grace,
And hurries meekly where he sent is?
And, when he grows apace, what blend
Of genius, chivalry and daring,
What virtues might our little friend
Display to brighten souls despairing?
What quiet charities unknown,
What modest, openhanded kindness,
What tolerance in touch and tone
For braggart human nature's blindness?
Or what—the worser part to view—
Of wanton waste and reckless gambling,
What darker paths shall he pursue
With sacrilegious step and shambling?
What coarse defiance, haply, hurl
At lights beyond his comprehension—
An attitudinising churl
Who struts with ludicrous pretension.
I know not—only this I know,
They're getting overstrained, my ditties,
This kind of poem ought to flow
Less like a solemn "Nunc Dimittis."
'Twas jaunty when I struck my lyre,
And jaunty seems this yearling baby;
But, as both year and song expire
They're sadder, each, and wiser, maybe.
"Hi-tiddley-hi-ti; or, I'm All Right" is heard, "all over the place," as light sleepers and studious dwellers in quiet streets are too well aware....