On the late King of the Sandwich Islands.
1825.
Beneath the marble, mud, or moss,
Which e’er his subjects shall determine,
Entombed in eulogies and dross,
The Island King is food for vermin.
Preserved by scribblers and by salt
From Lethe and sepulchral vapours,
His body fills his father’s vault,
His character, the daily papers.
Well was he framed for royal seat;
Kind, to the meanest of his creatures,
With tender heart and tender feet,
And open purse and open features;
The ladies say who laid him out,
And earned thereby the usual pensions,
They never wreathed a shroud about
A corpse of more genteel dimensions.
He warred with half-a-score of foes,
And shone, by proxy, in the quarrel;
Enjoyed hard fights and soft repose,
And deathless debt and deathless laurel.
His enemies were scalped and flayed
Whene’er his soldiers were victorious,
And widows wept and paupers paid
To make their sovereign ruler glorious;
And days were set apart for thanks,
And prayers were said by pious readers,
And laud was lavished on the ranks,
And laurel lavished on their leaders;
Events are writ by History’s pen,
Though causes are too much to care for;
Fame talks about the where and when,
While Folly asks the why and wherefore.
In peace he was intensely gay
And indefatigably busy,
Preparing gewgaws every day,
And shows to make his subjects dizzy,
And hearing the report of guns,
And signing the report of gaolers,
And making up receipts for buns,
And patterns for the army tailors,
And building carriages and boats,
And streets, and chapels, and pavilions,
And regulating all the coats,
And all the principles of millions,
And drinking homilies and gin,
And chewing pork and adulation,
And looking backwards upon sin,
And looking forward to salvation.
The people, in his happy reign,
Were blest beyond all other nations;
Unharmed by foreign axe or chain,
Unhealed by civil innovations;
They served the usual logs and stones
With all the usual rites and terrors,
And swallowed all their father’s bones,
And swallowed all their father’s errors.
When the fierce mob, with clubs and knives,
All vowed that nothing should content them,
But that their representatives
Should actually represent them,
He interposed the proper checks,
By sending troops with drums and banners
To cut their speeches short, and necks,
And break their heads to mend their manners,
And when Dissension flung her stain
Upon the light of Hymen’s altar,
And Destiny made Hymen’s chain
As galling as the hangman’s halter,
He passed a most domestic life,
By many mistresses befriended,
And did not put away his wife,
For fear the priest should be offended.
And thus at last he sank to rest
Amid the blessings of his people,
And sighs were heard from every breast,
And bells were tolled from every steeple,
And loud was every public throng
His brilliant character adorning,
And poets raised a mourning song,
And clothiers raised the price of mourning.
His funeral was very grand,
Followed by many robes and maces,
And all the great ones of the land
Struggling, as heretofore, for places;
And every loyal minister
Was there, with signs of purse-felt sorrow,
Save Pozzy, his lord chancellor,
Who promised to attend to-morrow.
Peace to his dust. His fostering care
By grateful hearts shall long be cherished;
And all his subjects shall declare
They lost a grinder when he perished.
They who shall look upon the lead
In which a people’s love hath shrined him,
Will say when all the worst is said,
Perhaps he leaves a worse behind him.