| |
Mr. Buntling Speaks:
O PROUD New York, that wast New Amsterdam, | |
| How art thou fallen away from dignity! | |
| Methinks thy Battery and thy Bowling Green | |
| Should split in angered earthquake at thy shame! | |
| Thou, too, indignant Peter, shouldst arise, | 5 |
| A shade with slim clay pipe and ligneous leg, | |
| To lay thy broad staff on the ungrateful heads | |
| Of these thy base descendants, them that love | |
| Gross pelf and pander to the parvenu! | |
| For such am I, even such, and better far | 10 |
| The laboring Scythia’s westward-pointed prow | |
| Nor me nor mine had hither borne unscathed | |
| Through the strait Narrows; but that either strand | |
| Had clashing met, and whelmed off Sandy Hook | |
| The great ship’s vigor in tumultuous waves! | 15 |
| Thus were averted this unseemly Ball, | |
| Its hollow and absurd extravagance | |
| Checked by the grim economy of death! | |
| |
Chorus of Knickerbocker Young Men
Old man, do not be nonsensical | |
| In your views about New York; | 20 |
| You are needlessly forensical | |
| For a potentate in Pork! | |
| Why not recollect with gratitude | |
| That we throng your mansion wide, | |
| And express no moral platitude | 25 |
| Upon Knickerbocker pride? | |
| Since the days when dull old Trinity | |
| Was a temple far up town, | |
| And a girl was thought divinity | |
| If she owned but one silk gown; | 30 |
| Since the days when each festivity | |
| They would all by twelve forsake, | |
| And the dominant proclivity | |
| Was for lemonade-and-cake; | |
| Since the days when aristocracy | 35 |
| Of the gender known as male, | |
| Would esteem it vain plutocracy | |
| To exploit a swallow-tail; | |
| Since the days when custom’s manacle | |
| Was a bond of rigid force,— | 40 |
| Since the days thus puritanical, | |
| We have altered things, of course. | |
| For the years are cruel pillagers, | |
| As they lay old fashions low, | |
| And to live like simple villagers | 45 |
| Is no longer comme il faut. | |
| Our progenitors (peace be with them!) | |
| Were a very stupid lot, | |
| And so little we agree with them | |
| That we imitate them not. | 50 |
| They were certainly respectable, | |
| As with pride we now declare, | |
| But we find it more delectable | |
| If we draw the line just there. | |
| For to fling aside all flattery, | 55 |
| And to speak as hits the mark, | |
| They were narrow as the Battery | |
| When compared with Central Park. | |
| |
