4.
Fletcher! Murray! Bob![1] where are you?
Stretched along the deck like logs—
Bear a hand, you jolly tar, you!
Here 's a rope's end for the dogs.
Hobhouse muttering fearful curses,
As the hatchway down he rolls,
Now his breakfast, now his verses,
Vomits forth—and damns our souls.
"Here 's a stanza[2]
On Braganza—
Help!"—"A couplet?"—"No, a cup
Of warm water—"
"What 's the matter?"
"Zounds! my liver 's coming up;
I shall not survive the racket
Of this brutal Lisbon Packet."
5.
Now at length we're off for Turkey,
Lord knows when we shall come back!
Breezes foul and tempests murky
May unship us in a crack.
But, since Life at most a jest is,
As philosophers allow,
Still to laugh by far the best is,
Then laugh on—as I do now.
Laugh at all things,
- ↑ [Murray was "Joe" Murray, an ancient retainer of the "Wicked Lord." Bob was Robert Rushton, the "little page" of "Childe Harold's Good Night." (See Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 26, note 1.)]
- ↑ [For "the stanza," addressed to the "Princely offspring of Braganza," published in the Morning Post, December 30, 1807, see English Bards, etc., line 142, note 1, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 308, 309.]
