And sorrow, like a sorcerer,
Spread out her melancholy pall,
So that its folds enveloped all,
And each became her worshipper.
And not a single child was born
Through all the years thereafter;
If words sprang from the lips of scorn
None came from those of laughter.
Finally, the inhabitants of Hamelin are passing through death's portal, and when all had departed:
—a message went to Rat-land
∗∗∗∗∗∗
And lo! a race of rats was at hand
∗∗∗∗∗∗
They swarmed into the highest towers,
And loitered in the fairest bowers,
And sat down where the mayor sat,
And also in his Sunday hat;
And gnawed revengefully thereat.
With rats for mayor and rats for people,
With rats in the cellar and rats in the steeple,
With rats without and rats within,
Stood poor, deserted Hamelin.
Like Dunbar, Cotter is a satirist of his people—or certain types of his people—a gentle, humorous, affectionate satirist. His medium for satire is dialect, inevitably. Sententious wisdom, irradiated with humor, appears in these pieces in
