Yes, you have floated down the tide Of time, a swan in grace and pride And majesty and beauty, till The law, the Ariel of your will, Power's best beloved, the law of libel (A bright link in the legal chain) Expounded, settled, and made plain, By your own charge, the jurors' Bible, Has clipp'd the venom'd tongue of slander, That dared to call you "Party's gander, The leader of the geese who make Our cities' parks and ponds their home, And keep her liberties awake By cackling, as their sires saved Rome. Grander of Party's pond, wherein Lizard, and toad, and terrapin, Your alehouse patriots, are seen, In Faction's feverish sunshine basking;" And now, to rend this veil of lies, Word-woven by your enemies, And keep your sainted memory free From tarnish with posterity, I take the liberty of asking Permission, sir, to write your life, With all its scenes of calm and strife, And all its turnings and its windings, A poem, in a quarto volume-- Verse, like the subject, blank and solemn, With elegant appropriate bindings, Of rat and mole skin the one half, The other a part fox, part calf. Your portrait, graven line for line, From that immortal bust in plaster, The master piece of Art's great master, Mr. Praxiteles Browere, Whose trowel is a thing divine, Shall smile and bow, and promise there, And twenty-nine fine forms and faces (The Corporation and the Mayor), Linked hand in hand, like loves and graces, Shall hover o'er it, group'd in air, With wild pictorial dance and song; The song of happy bees in bowers, The dance of Guido's graceful hours, All scattering Flushing's garden flowers Round the dear head they've loved so long.