A New Fable

How oft in happy youth would we sup 
With all the jolly beasts of Æsop, 
Believing in the talk of donkeys, 
Crows, foxes, rabbits, cats and monkeys, 
And all their kindred, without quarrel, 
But skipping still the human moral:
Or with that yet more genial “beast"
LA FONTAINE, how we used to feast, 
Unplagued by the supererogation 
Of "application " to a narration 
As plain to take through all its process 
As any elephant's proboscis.
     In fact there's something rather suits us
In any agent that imbrutes us;
Hence sots themselves to brutehood banish, 
And Fabulists make brutes look mannish:
Hence Mr. Abraham McModdle
Swap'd brains for bitters, in his noddle;
And I, on my poetic ‘Sorrel,' 
Use him to paint a fable's moral.

     McModdle's wife was not a model
Of any thing but Mrs. Caudle, 
Or Mrs. Job, or shrewd Zantippe, 
Or may be, Mrs.—Mississippi!
A perfect torrent of a woman,
Who could have found her match in few men;
With sallow cheek hirsute and flabbied, 
Hare-lipped, cross-eyed, cross-grained and crabbed 
Sharp-tongued, sharp-nosed, and hobble-gaited, 
And spirit to her body mated.

As day by day she would belabor him, 
Grim taciturnity seized Abraham, 
Byronic wrath with turn-down collar, 
And fits of misanthropic dolor.
Deceived by Hymen, like a jackass 
He took the briery path of Bacchus;
Determined if he must be beat on 
Like steel, he'd have a welding heat on;
If cares like woodchucks overrun him, 
And troubles multiplied upon him,
He'd fly their ne'er-to-be-withstood shocks, 
And drink, to drown 'em out like woodchucks.
So Mr. Abraham McModdle
Fled Mis. M. and took the bottle.
But if there come for't any comfort, 
He must be deaf or she be dumb for’t, 
For oft as he came home in liquor 
He found her evil tongue go quicker, 
Too glad if an avenging broom-stick—
[TWO LINES OBSCURED]

One night with head leaned on his elbow, 
His last hope flickering in a fell blow—
A very gale on which despair come, 
And horror bristling his thin'd hairs some, 
That shook off those deracinated
As autumn winds the leaves of late did;
He sat and thought, and saw the failures 
Of all his midnight saturnalias, 
And dimly saw what's clear as blitzen 
To one who keeps his native wits in.
Dissolving care in liquor is hard, 
It only pickles it like a lizzard, 
And breeds new troubles from long-kept ills,
As vinegar breeds little reptiles,
But seeing through a wine-glass darkly, 
His judgment took not hold so starkly.
Like Dr. puzzled to oppose his
Spent wits to a stubborn diagnosis, 
He jumped to doubling of the doses.
For Abraham 'twas the sole criterion
‘Drink deep or taste not the Pierion,' 
Et cetera—Hock (hic) Burgundy,
Which were his wisdom's fount and fund aye, 
So off he started inn-ward, hoping 
By lifted hand and silent groping
To save his ears from tongue and dough-pin, 
And haply find some depth of bibbing 
To quench the terrors of his rib in.

Upon that die (which dyes blue ruin)
His latest heart and hope he threw in, 
And on his ear, and in his ear-drum, 
With shocks that burned as they had seared 'em, 
From tongue and hand-talk of his woman
He bore that hope’s disastrous omen.
Below the fit sign of the Dragon
Our flunkey dipped in many a flagon
Till Charlies drove his jeweled wagon
Half round the pivot-star we drag on,
And the Fall Pleiads bore their skillet
High o’er the garret ridge until it
Could pour down chimney what might fill it.
Then starting home he glanced to heaven,
Saw there some twenty stars for seven,
And in the west two setting moons,
That fadged [sic] their crooked horns like spoons,
He saw his dubious abode
Now standing on this side the road
And now on that, then both together,
Which made his doubtful steps go hither
Thither and back, and stand to bracing
[FIVE OBSCURED LINES]
The house, that was in sooth, but ??
And fell, as luck would have him in it,
Not in with, merely, but into it, [??]
Where careless, with the floor beneath, he 
Lay stretched, as if his grog were Lethe

Delightful visions filed his fancies
That danced their high careering dances,
Exuberant as if fate and broom-sticks 
Were sunk in thy eternal gloom, Styx!
"Well, now she's conquered, and there's concord," 
He mused, still harping on that one chord,
“I liquor when I dare not lick her, 
And find my beaker saves from slaker[?].
At last list my sea-deep draughts have drowsed her,
With all her jargon. But, confound her, 
She comes! I'd know that cry and tread-lame 
Amidst the fight of routed Bedlam!" 
He rose half daring to withstand her, 
Bold-hearted as an Alexander;
But ah, his glance's slight obliquity 
Endowed his lady with ubiquity:
Four eyes that crossed their visual flashes, 
Swift, fierce, as braiding four-strand lashes, 
Two hands with cudgels, two with knuckles, 
With terror froze his first faint chuckles.
"Good heavens!" he cried, with that last fraction 
Of breath left in him, "'twas destruction 
With one wife, fierce enough to run for, 
Here's two; have mercy! I am done for! 
Whereat he fainted, and fell under 
The armed virago's bolted thunder.

                           MORAL.
The moral, if a man would have it, he 
Should state distinctly and with brevity.
As I have several that are licit 
I'll number them, to be explicit.
First, let this Fable teach the duty 
Never to marry just for beauty.
And secondly, if Hymen's torch is 
So borne awryly that it scorches, 
Observe, that rum, instead of water,
Poured on will make it burn the hotter.
Thirdly and lastly, to drown trouble 
In liquor, only GIVES YOU DOUBLE.