C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Twenty-Eight and Twenty-Nine
By Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802–1839)
I
And an infant’s idle laughter;
The Old Year went with mourning by—
The New came dancing after!
Let Sorrow shed her lonely tear,
Let Revelry hold her ladle;
Bring boughs of cypress for the bier,
Fling roses on the cradle;
Mutes to wait on the funeral state;
Pages to pour the wine:
A requiem for Twenty-Eight,
And a health to Twenty-Nine!
Alas for human sorrow!
Our yesterday is nothingness,
What else will be our morrow?
Still Beauty must be stealing hearts,
And Knavery stealing purses;
Still cooks must live by making tarts,
And wits by making verses;
While sages prate and courts debate,
The same stars set and shine:
And the world, as it rolled through Twenty-Eight,
Must roll through Twenty-Nine.
To the tomb his father came to;
Some thief will wade through blood and crime
To a crown he has no claim to;
Some suffering land will rend in twain
The manacles that bound her,
And gather the links of the broken chain
To fasten them proudly round her;
The grand and great will love and hate,
And combat and combine:
And much where we were in Twenty-Eight,
We shall be in Twenty-Nine.
And Kenyon to sink the Nation;
And Sheil will abuse the Parliament,
And Peel the Association;
And the thought of bayonets and swords
Will make ex-chancellors merry;
And jokes will be cut in the House of Lords,
And throats in the County Kerry;
And writers of weight will speculate
On the Cabinet’s design:
And just what it did in Twenty-Eight
It will do in Twenty-Nine.
And the God of Cups his orgies;
And there’ll be riots in St. Giles,
And weddings in St. George’s;
And mendicants will sup like kings,
And lords will swear like lackeys;
And black eyes oft will lead to rings,
And rings will lead to black eyes;
And pretty Kate will scold her mate,
In a dialect all divine,—
Alas! they married in Twenty-Eight,
They will part in Twenty-Nine.
All thoughts and things look older;
How the laugh of Pleasure grows less gay,
And the heart of Friendship colder;
But still I shall be what I have been,
Sworn foe to Lady Reason,
And seldom troubled with the spleen,
And fond of talking treason;
I shall buckle my skate, and leap my gate,
And throw and write my line:
And the woman I worshiped in Twenty-Eight
I shall worship in Twenty-Nine.