Page:The Hasty-Pudding.djvu/12

But, rising grateful to th’ accustom’d ear,
All bards should catch it, and all realms revere!

Assist me first with pious toil to trace,
Thro’ wrecks of time thy lineage and thy race;
Declare what lovely squaw, in days of yore,
(Ere great Columbus sought thy native shore,)
First gave thee to the world; her works of fame
Have liv’d indeed, but liv’d without a name.
Some tawny Ceres, goddess of her days,
First learn’d with stones to crack the well-dry’d maize,
Thro’ the rough sieve to shake the golden show’r,
In boiling water stir the yellow flour—
The yellow flour, bestrew’d and stir’d with haste,
Swells in the flood and thickens to a paste,
Then puffs and wallops, rises to the brim,
Drinks the dry knobs that on the surface swim;
The knobs at last the busy ladle breaks,
And the whole mass its true consistence takes.

Could but her sacred name, unknown so long,
Rise like her labours, to the son of song,
To her, to them, I’d consecrate my lays,
And blow her pudding with the breath of praise.
If ’twas Oello, whom I sang before,
I here ascribe her one great virtue more.
Not thro’ the rich Peruvian realms alone
The fame of Sol’s sweet daughter should be known,
But o’er the world’s wide climes should live secure,
Far as his rays extend, as long as they endure.

Dear Hasty-Pudding, what unpromis’d joy
Expands my heart, to meet thee in Savoy!
Doom’d o’er the world thro’ devious paths to roam,
Each clime my country, and each house my home,
My soul is sooth’d, my cares have found an end,
I greet my long-lost, unforgotten friend.

For thee thro’ Paris, that corrupted town,
How long in vain I wander’d up and down,
Where shameless Bacchus, with his drenching hoard
Cold from his cave, usurps the morning board.
London is lost in smoke and steep’d in tea;
No Yankee there can lisp the name of thee;