the comet.
an astronomical anecdote.
“i cannot fill up a blank better than with a short history of this self-same starling.”—sterne’s sentimental journey.
amongst professors of astronomy,
adepts in the celestial economy,
the name of h*******l’s very often cited,
and justly so, for he is hand and glove
with ev’ry bright intelligence above;
indeed, it was his custom so to stop,
watching the stars upon the house’s top,
that once upon a time he got be-knighted.
in his observatory thus coquetting
with venus—or with juno gone astray,
all sublunary matters quite forgetting
in his flirtations with the winking stars,
acting the spy—it might be upon mars—
a new andré;
or, like a tom of coventry, sly peeping,
at dian sleeping;
or ogling thro’ his glass
some heavenly lass
tripping with pails along the milky way;
or looking at that wain of charles the martyrs:—
thus he was sitting, watchman of the sky,
when lo! a something with a tail of flame
made him exclaim,
“my stars!”—he always put that stress on my—
“my stars and garters!”
[pg 268]
“a comet, sure as i’m alive!
a noble one as i should wish to view;
it can’t be halley’s though, that is not due
till eighteen thirty-five.
magnificent!—how fine his fiery trail!
zounds! ’tis a pity, though he comes unsought—
unask’d—unreckon’d,—in no human thought—
he ought—he ought—he ought
to have been caught
with scientific salt upon his tail!”
“posse cometatis.”
“i look’d no more for it, i do declare,
than the great bear!
as sure as tycho brahe is dead,
it really enter’d in my head
no more than berenice’s hair!”
[pg 269]
thus musing, heaven’s grand inquisitor
sat gazing on the uninvited visitor
till john, the serving-man, came to the upper
regions, with “please your honour, come to supper.”
“supper! good john, to-night i shall not sup
except on that phenomenon—look up!”
“not sup!” cried john, thinking with consternation
that supping on a star must be starvation,
or ev’n to batten
on ignes fatui would never fatten,
his visage seem’d to say,—that very odd is,—
but still his master the same tune ran on,
“i can’t come down,—go to the parlour, john,
and say i’m supping with the heavenly bodies.”
“the heavenly bodies!” echoed john, “ahem!”
his mind still full of famishing alarms,
“’zooks, if your honour sups with them,
in helping, somebody must make long arms!”
he thought his master’s stomach was in danger,
but still in the same tone replied the knight,
“go down, john, go, i have no appetite;
say i’m engaged with a celestial stranger.”—
quoth john, not much au fait in such affairs,
“wouldn’t the stranger take a bit down stairs?”
“no,” said the master, smiling, and no wonder,
at such a blunder,
“the stranger is not quite the thing you think,
he wants no meat or drink,
and one may doubt quite reasonably whether
he has a mouth,
seeing his head and tail are joined together.
behold him,—there he is, john, in the south.”
[pg 270]
john look’d up with his portentous eyes,
each rolling like a marble in its socket.
at last the fiery tad-pole spies,
and, full of vauxhall reminiscence, cries,
“a rare good rocket!”
“a what! a rocket, john! far from it!
what you behold, john, is a comet;
one of those most eccentric things
that in all ages
have puzzled sages
and frighten’d kings;
with fear of change that flaming meteor, john,
perplexes sovereigns, throughout its range”—
“do he?” cried john;
“well, let him flare on,
i haven’t got no sovereigns to change!”
