MY Bish, since fickle Fortune's dead, Where throbs thy speculating head That hatch'd such matchless stories Of gaining, like Napoleon, all Success on every capital, And thirty thousand glories? Dost thou now sit when evening comes, Wrapt in its cold and wintry glooms, And dream o'er faded pleasures? See numbers rise and numbers fall, Hear Lottery's last funereal call O'er all her vanish'd treasures? Thy head, distract 'twixt weal and woe, Feels the @3last@1 Lottery like a blow From malice -- aimed at thee; No prizes pass in decent rank, Nothing is left thee but a blank, And worthy Mrs. B. Perchance at times thy wits may strive With cards to keep the game alive, And mock the old arena, By fighting Fortune at Ecarte, Thou Charing Cross's Bonaparte In little St. IIelena. Thou'rt out of luck -- for to thy share, Not as of old, falls blank despair; The thought oft gives the vapours. In some 'cursed cottage of content' Thy baffled hopeless hours are spent Spelling the daily papers. No more thy name in column stares On the lured reader unawares; The voice of Fame is o'er! No more it breathes thee into print; What is Fame's breath? There's nothing in't -- The merest puff -- no more! The puff to others now belongs, The Wrights have risen upon thy wrongs, Rowlands to Hunts recoil! The wheel of Fortune, now forlorn, Turns but to grind the roasted corn, Greased with Macassar oil. Election chances seem'd a vent For thy desires -- but Parliament Is not so easy won. Numbers were once to thee a treat, But now by numbers thou wert beat, And Rowland Stephenson. At Drury, too, the chance was thine; But thou shalt in past glory shine, Not as the uncertain actor; Not as the man who opens wide The floodgate for the public tide, But as the Great Contractor. And when -- but Heaven protract the day -- The time is come for Life's decay, Prolonged shall be thy joys. A favourite wheel shall carry thee, And like thy darling Lottery, Be drawn by Blue-coat boys. A tumulus shall cover thee And thine. A barrow it will be, Sacred to thy one wheel. And genuine tears, my Bish, from eyes Of those who never got a prize, At morn and eve shall steal. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE PRIESTHOOD by GEORGE HERBERT TO THE LADYBIRD by MOTHER GOOSE LYNCHED by FRANK ANKENBRAND JR. CAPTAIN BING by LYMAN FRANK BAUM THE CITY by HARRY RANDOLPH BLYTHE A MEMORY by WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE |