The Ballad of Mr. Cooke

Where the sturdy ocean breeze     Drives the spray of roaring seas,     That the Cliff House balconies     Overlook:     There, in spite of rain that balked,     With his sandals duly chalked,     Once upon a tight-rope walked     Mr. Cooke.     But the jesters lightsome mien,     And his spangles and his sheen,     All had vanished when the scene     He forsook.     Yet in some delusive hope,     In some vague desire to cope,     One still came to view the rope     Walked by Cooke.     Amid Beautys bright array,     On that strange eventful day,     Partly hidden from the spray,     In a nook,     Stood Florinda Vere de Vere;     Who, with wind-disheveled hair,     And a rapt, distracted air,     Gazed on Cooke.     Then she turned, and quickly cried     To her lover at her side,     While her form with love and pride     Wildly shook:     Clifford Snook! oh, hear me now!     Here I break each plighted vow;     Theres but one to whom I bow,     And thats Cooke!     Haughtily that young man spoke:     I descend from noble folk;     Seven Oaks, and then Sennoak,     Lastly Snook,     Is the way my name I trace.     Shall a youth of noble race     In affairs of love give place     To a Cooke?     Clifford Snook, I know thy claim     To that lineage and name,     And I think Ive read the same     In Horne Tooke;     But I swear, by all divine,     Never, never, to be thine,     Till thou canst upon yon line     Walk like Cooke.     Though to that gymnastic feat     He no closer might compete     Than to strike a balance-sheet     In a book;     Yet thenceforward from that day     He his figure would display     In some wild athletic way,     After Cooke.     On some household eminence,     On a clothes-line or a fence,     Over ditches, drains, and thence     Oer a brook,     He, by high ambition led,     Ever walked and balanced,     Till the people, wondering, said,     How like Cooke!     Step by step did he proceed,     Nerved by valor, not by greed,     And at last the crowning deed     Undertook.     Misty was the midnight air,     And the cliff was bleak and bare,     When he came to do and dare,     Just like Cooke.     Through the darkness, oer the flow,     Stretched the line where he should go,     Straight across as flies the crow     Or the rook.     One wild glance around he cast;     Then he faced the ocean blast,     And he strode the cable last     Touched by Cooke.     Vainly roared the angry seas,     Vainly blew the ocean breeze;     But, alas! the walkers knees     Had a crook;     And before he reached the rock     Did they both together knock,     And he stumbled with a shock     Unlike Cooke!     Downward dropping in the dark,     Like an arrow to its mark,     Or a fish-pole when a shark     Bites the hook,     Dropped the pole he could not save,     Dropped the walker, and the wave     Swift engulfed the rival brave     Of J. Cooke!     Came a roar across the sea     Of sea-lions in their glee,     In a tongue remarkably     Like Chinook;     And the maddened sea-gull seemed     Still to utter, as he screamed,     Perish thus the wretch who deemed     Himself Cooke!     But on misty moonlit nights     Comes a skeleton in tights,     Walks once more the giddy heights     He mistook;     And unseen to mortal eyes,     Purged of grosser earthly ties,     Now at last in spirit guise     Outdoes Cooke.     Still the sturdy ocean breeze     Sweeps the spray of roaring seas,     Where the Cliff House balconies     Overlook;     And the maidens in their prime,     Reading of this mournful rhyme,     Weep where, in the olden time,     Walked J. Cooke.