Lines On The Portrait Of A Celebrated Publisher

A moony breadth of virgin face,     By thought unviolated;     A patient mouth, to take from scorn     The hook with bank-notes baited!     Its self-complacent sleekness shows     How thrift goes with the fawner;     An unctuous unconcern of all     Which nice folks call dishonor!     A pleasant print to peddle out     In lands of rice and cotton;     The model of that face in dough     Would make the artist's fortune.     For Fame to thee has come unsought,     While others vainly woo her,     In proof how mean a thing can make     A great man of its doer.     To whom shall men thyself compare,     Since common models fail 'em,     Save classic goose of ancient Rome,     Or sacred ass of Balaam?     The gabble of that wakeful goose     Saved Rome from sack of Brennus;     The braying of the prophet's ass     Betrayed the angel's menace!     So when Guy Fawkes, in petticoats,     And azure-tinted hose on,     Was twisting from thy love-lorn sheets     The slow-match of explosion     An earthquake blast that would have tossed     The Union as a feather,     Thy instinct saved a perilled land     And perilled purse together.     Just think of Carolina's sage     Sent whirling like a Dervis,     Of Quattlebum in middle air     Performing strange drill-service!     Doomed like Assyria's lord of old,     Who fell before the Jewess,     Or sad Abimelech, to sigh,     "Alas! a woman slew us!"     Thou saw'st beneath a fair disguise     The danger darkly lurking,     And maiden bodice dreaded more     Than warrior's steel-wrought jerkin.     How keen to scent the hidden plot!     How prompt wert thou to balk it,     With patriot zeal and pedler thrift,     For country and for pocket!     Thy likeness here is doubtless well,     But higher honor's due it;     On auction-block and negro-jail     Admiring eyes should view it.     Or, hung aloft, it well might grace     The nation's senate-chamber     A greedy Northern bottle-fly     Preserved in Slavery's amber