Not so thy Perryan Pens! True to their M’s and N’s, They do not with a whizzing zig-zag split, Straddle, turn up their noses, sulk, and spit, Or drop large dots, Huge fullstop blots, Where even semicolons were unfit. They will not frizzle up, or, broom-like, drudge In sable sludge-- Nay, bought at proper “Patent Perryan” shops, They write good grammar, sense, and mind their stops; Compose both prose and verse, the sad or merry-- For when the Editor, whose pains compile The grown-up Annual, or the Juvenile, Vaunteth his articles, not women’s, men’s, But lays “by the most celebrated Pens,” What means he but thy Patent Pens, my Perry? VII. Pleasant they are to feel! So firm! so flexible! composed of steel So finely temper’d--fit for tenderest Miss To give her passion breath, Or Kings to sign the warrant stern of death-- But their supremest merit still is this, Write with them all your days, Tragedy, Comedy, all kinds of plays-- (No Dramatist should ever be without ’em)-- And, just conceive the bliss,-- There is so little of the goose aboot ’em, One’s safe from any hiss! VIII. Ah! who can paint that first great awful night, Big with a blessing or a blight, When the poor Dramatist, all fume and fret, Fuss, fidget, fancy, fever, funking, fright, Ferment, fault-fearing, faintness--more f’s yet: Flushed, frigid, flurried, flinching, fitful, flat,-- Add famished, fuddled, and fatigued, to that; Funeral, fate-foreboding--sits in doubt, Or rather doubt with hope, a wretched marriage, To see his Play upon the stage come out; No stage to him! it is Thalia’s carriage, And he is sitting on the spikes behind it, Striving to look as if he didn’t mind it! IX.