But lo! a PARCHMENT! Surely it would seem The sculptured impress speaks of power supreme; Some grave design the solemn page must claim That shows so broadly an emblazoned name. A sovereign's promise! Look, the lines afford All Honor gives when Caution asks his word: There sacred Faith has laid her snow-white hands, And awful Justice knit her iron bands; Yet every leaf is stained with treachery's dye, And every letter crusted with a lie. Alas! no treason has degraded yet The Arab's salt, the Indian's calumet; A simple rite, that bears the wanderer's pledge, Blunts the keen shaft and turns the dagger's edge; While jockeying senates stop to sign and seal, And freeborn statesmen legislate to steal. Rise, Europe, tottering with thine Atlas load, Turn thy proud eye to Freedom's blest abode, And round her forehead, wreathed with heavenly flame, Bind the dark garland of her daughter's shame! Ye ocean clouds, that wrap the angry blast, Coil her stained ensign round its haughty mast, Or tear the fold that wears so foul a scar, And drive a bolt through every blackened star! Once more,--once only,--- we must stop so soon: What have we here? A GERMAN-SILVER SPOON; A cheap utensil, which we often see Used by the dabblers in aesthetic tea, Of slender fabric, somewhat light and thin, Made of mixed metal, chiefly lead and tin; The bowl is shallow, and the handle small, Marked in large letters with the name JEAN PAUL. Small as it is, its powers are passing strange, For all who use it show a wondrous change; And first, a fact to make the barbers stare, It beats Macassar for the growth of hair. See those small youngsters whose expansive ears Maternal kindness grazed with frequent shears; Each bristling crop a dangling mass becomes, And all the spoonies turn to Absaloms Nor this alone its magic power displays, It alters strangely all their works and ways; With uncouth words they tire their tender lungs, The same bald phrases on their hundred tongues "Ever" "The Ages" in their page appear, "Alway" the bedlamite is called a "Seer;" On every leaf the "earnest" sage may scan, Portentous bore! their "many-sided" man,-- A weak eclectic, groping vague and dim, Whose every angle is a half-starved whim, Blind as a mole and curious as a lynx, Who rides a beetle, which he calls a "Sphinx." And oh, what questions asked in clubfoot rhyme Of Earth the tongueless and the deaf-mute Time! Here babbling "Insight" shouts in Nature's ears His last conundrum on the orbs and spheres; There Self-inspection sucks its little thumb, With "Whence am I?" and "Wherefore did I come?" Deluded infants! will they ever know Some doubts must darken o'er the world below, Though all the Platos of the nursery trail Their "clouds of glory" at the go-cart's tail? Oh might these couplets their attention claim That gain their author the Philistine's name (A stubborn race, that, spurning foreign law, Was much belabored with an ass's jaw.)