Something I must invent and paint; But, oh! my wit is not Like one of those kind substantives The answer Who and What? Oh, for some happy hit! to throw The gazer in a trance; But _posé là_--there I am posed, As people say in France. In vain I sit and strive to think, I find my head, alack! Painfully empty, still, just like A bottle “on the rack.” In vain I task my barren brain Some new idea to catch, And tease my hair--ideas are shy Of “coming to the scratch.” In vain I stare upon the air, No mental visions dawn; A blank my canvas still remains, And worse--a blank undrawn: An “aching void” that mars my rest With one eternal hint, For, like the little goblin page, It still keeps crying “Tint!” But what to tint? ay, there’s the rub, That plagues me all the while, As, Selkirk-like, I sit without A subject for my _i’le_. “Invention’s seventh heaven” the bard Has written--but my case Persuades me that the creature dwells In quite another place. Sniffing the lamp, the ancients thought, Demosthenes _must_ toil; But works of art are works indeed, And always “smell of oil.” Yet painting pictures some folks think, Is merely play and fun; That what is on an easel set Must easily be done. But, zounds! if they could sit in this Uneasy easy-chair, They’d very soon be glad enough To cut the camel’s hair. Oh! who can tell the pang it is To sit as I this day-- With all my canvas spread, and yet Without an inch of way. Till, mad at last to find I am Amongst such empty skullers, I feel that I could strike myself, But no--I’ll “strike my colours.” A TRUE STORY. Of all our pains, since man was curst, I mean of body, not the mental, To name the worst, among the worst, The dental sure is transcendental; Some bit of masticating bone, That ought to help to clear a shelf, But let its proper work alone, And only seems to gnaw itself; In fact, of any grave attack On victual there is little danger, ’Tis so like coming to the _rack_, As well as going to the manger. Old Hunks--it seemed a fit retort Of justice on his grinding ways-- Possessed a grinder of the sort, That troubled all his latter days. The best of friends fall out, and so His teeth had done some years ago, Save some old stumps with ragged root, And they took turn about to shoot; If he drank any chilly liquor, They made it quite a point to throb; But if he warmed it on the hob, Why then they only twitched the quicker.