class="i0">May, haply, listen with delight,
To Park's low, grov'ling, growling song,
As, through the sloughs, it pours along;
And though in marshes, fens and ditches,
It may, perhaps, amuse the witches;
Yet, should an unsuspecting team
Hear, unawares, the dismal scream
Of his lugubr'ous, muck-born verse,
'Twould sadly frighten every horse.
And, had the Children in the Wood
Just heard his strain, and understood
Its wretched, wrangling, dismal din,
How frighten'd had those children been!—
Believing soon that doom would crack,
Or that the de'il was on their track!
Had Robert Kid, that pirate knave,
Heard it come creaking o'er the wave,
He had supposed some demon's shell
Was sounding from the gates of hell.
The red men, savage, wild and rude,
Deep buried in their solitude,
Would wake affrighted from their dreams,
If, haply, Park's poetic screams
Should penetrate their secret lair;
And they, forthwith, would kneel in prayer
To the great Spirit of the sun,
Believing that their days were done;
That hell's dark hole was open thrown,
And that this strain was Satan's own,
In wrath, now prowling through the wood,
Devouring Indians for his food.
Ev'n David Crockett would have run,
Affrighted, from his game and gun,
Had he but heard, in woods remote,
Park's incongruous jangling note,
Wild screeching on the western gale,
An unpoetic dismal wail:
Nor stopp'd in his despairing flight,
In San Jacinto, e'en, to fight;
But, rushing wildly and forlorn,
E'en to the billows, off Cape Horn,
Most likely there, himself had drown'd,
In terror of the doleful sound.
In western wilds, had Daniel Boon
But heard, for once, the lecherous loon,
He would have dropp'd his axe and gun,
And, to the eastward, rapid run;
Nor stay'd, in all his fearful flight,
For wind or storm, through day and night,
Till he some civil spot could reach,
Uncursed by Park's dolorous screech.
And had Columbus heard his roar,
When first he landed on this shore,
He would have turn'd his bark amain,
And never ventured here again;
Impress'd that, in this western world,
There was, from Pandemonium hurl'd,
Some spirit damn'd for e'er to bark
The hideous songs of hideous Park.—
The owls and bats that curse the land,
Could they but hear and