A NEW SONG

M R . Chairman, allow me to speak,
And, gentlemen, do not prove jeerers,
Though my story to me is all Greek,
And perhaps may prove so to my hearers.
Attention! I sha'n't keep you long —
Athenians should never be lost in ease —
O list to my wonderful song
Of your mighty grandfather Demosthenes.

At school he was called a 'cute lad,
A dead hand at syntax and grammar,
Yet his spouting was shockingly bad,
He did nothing but stutter and stammer.
The weakest must go to the wall,
So, quizz'd by the lads and the lasses,
He walked off to blubber and bawl
To the Polufloisboio Thalasses .

Then rose from the sea in a shell
Old Neptune's salt rib Amphitrite,
She row'd him for making a yell,
And cried, in disdain, " Hoity toity!
Dame Thetis might come to her son,
But I'm on another guess station. "
Thus tutor'd, our hero bugun
To blubber his maiden oration.

" Zounds! goddess, don't bother and preach,
All trades they must have a beginning;
Whenever I set up a speech,
All Athens it sets up a-grinning. "
" Psha! blockhead, I'll teach you to squeak!
I'll tune up your basses and trebles. — "
So saying, she greeted our Greek
With a mouthful of sea-weed and pebbles.

Returning, he mounted the stage,
His eloquence took in the nation,
All Athens applauded the sage,
And bravo, encore , came in fashion,
Whenever he spouted, I wot,
These pebbles came in for the glory;
They shook in his jaws like the shot
In the patent shot manufactory.

Ye sons of the senate, who still
For freedom are spouting and raving,
I'd advise you to bring in a bill
Your own throats with granite for paving.
O that is the way, I declare,
To be with Demosthenes even,
Your pebbles to spit at the chair,
And that I call stoning St. Stephen .

We modern Athenians are able
To open to glory a new door,
For while we have wine on the table,
We won't say Ariston men hudor .
We needn't for pebble-stones probe,
Like Dad in old ocean's dark cavern;
Our eloquence sounds through the Globe —
To be sure I don't mean the Globe Tavern.