To Sylvanus Urban, Esq.

Oh! Mr. Urban! never must thou lurch
A sober age made serious drunk by thee;
Hop in thy pleasant way from church to church,
And nurse thy little bald Biography.

Oh, my Sylvanus! what a heart is thine!
And what a page attends thee! Long may I
Hang in demure confusion o'er each line
That asks thy little questions with a sigh!

Old tottering years have nodded to their falls,
Like pensioners that creep about and die;--
But thou, Old Parr of periodicals,
Livest in monthly immortality!

How sweet!--as Byron of his infant said,--
"Knowledge of objects" in thine eye to trace;
To see the mild no-meanings of thy head,
Taking a quiet nap upon thy face!

How dear through thy Obituary to roam,
And not a name of any name to catch!
To meet thy Criticism walking home
Averse from rows, and never calling "Watch!"

Rich is thy page in soporific things,--
Composing compositions,--lulling men,--
Faded old posies of unburied rings,--
Confessions dozing from an opiate pen:--

Lives of Right Reverends that have never lived,--
Deaths of good people that have really died,--
Parishioners,--hatched,--husbanded,--and wived,--
Bankrupts and Abbots breaking side by side!

The sacred query,--the remote response,--
The march of serious mind, extremely slow,--
The graver's cut at some right agèd sconce,
Famous for nothing many years ago!

B. asks of C. if Milton e'er did write
"Comus," obscured beneath some Ludlow lid;--
And C., next month, an answer doth indite,
Informing B. that Mr. Milton did!

X. sends the portrait of a genuine flea,
Caught upon Martin Luther years agone;--
And Mr. Parkes, of Shrewsbury, draws a bee,
Long dead, that gathered honey for King John.

There is no end of thee,--there is no end,
Sylvanus, of thy A, B, C, D-merits!
Thou dost, with alphabets, old walls attend,
And poke the letters into holes, like ferrets.

Go on, Sylvanus!--Bear a wary eye,
The churches cannot yet be quite run out!
Some parishes must yet have been passed by,--
There's Bullock-Smithy has a church no doubt!

Go on--and close the eyes of distant ages!
Nourish the names of the undoubted dead!
So Epicures shall pick thy lobster-pages,
Heavy and lively, though but seldom red.

Go on! and thrive! Demurest of odd fellows!
Bottling up dulness in an ancient binn!
Still live! still prose!--continue still to tell us
Old truths! no strangers, though we take them in!