Egerton-Warburton, Rowland Eyles

England, (1804-1891)

THE BOAR AND THE SINGINGBIRD

  1. A MILLIONAIRE of much pretence,
  2. Of great conceit, and little sense—
  3. For ignorance, as oft we see,
  4. Walks hand in hand with vanity—
  5. A savant in his own esteem,
  6. In every art a judge supreme,
  7. Of genius gold he thought the test,
  8. And wealth with taste and talent blest.
  9.  
  10. Assembled round his table sit
  11. Men fam’d for science and for wit.
  12. No artist could his sketch complete
  13. Till he had laid it at his feet;
  14. No sculptor could a Venus cast
  15. Till compass he had o’er it pass’d;
  16. The architect his plans outspread;
  17. The author there his poem read.
  18.  
  19. Their voices they in chorus raise
  20. His judgment and his taste to praise;
  21. And while he feasts them, one and all
  22. Their patron a Mæcenas call.
  23.  
  24. One noon, as, ‘neath the forest spray,
  25. He rambled in the month of May,
  26. A Woodman his attendant guide,
  27. Whose head with brains was well supplied;
  28. Behold! a boar, who now with toil
  29. Of snout upturn’d the forest soil,
  30. Now deep in earth was seen to wedge
  31. His tusk, to give it keener edge;
  32. Around him, fluttering as he plough’d,
  33. The wood-birds carroll’d sweet and loud;
  34. From forest-tree, from hawthorn-bush,
  35. Came linnet, nightingale, and thrush;
  36. Where’er he roam’d the tuneful throng
  37. Pursued him with unceasing song.
  38. The brute, a connoisseur profound
  39. In music, listen’d to the sound,
  40. Now raised his head, as if to tell
  41. The birds he liked their voices well,
  42. Now shook it in disapprobation
  43. While he resumed his occupation.
  44. “They choose,” said Dives, “much amiss,
  45. An animal so gross as this;
  46. Their music and themselves they wrong
  47. To make this brute a judge of song.”
  48. “Excuse me,” said the Woodman, “they
  49. But show the tact which men display;
  50. The soil upturn’d, his grovelling snout
  51. Brings many a dainty morsel out;
  52. ‘Tis that which tunes their hungry throats,
  53. And prompts the music of their notes;
  54. The labour of his tusk they need
  55. Fresh worms to find on which they feed,
  56. The brute, with much self-satisfaction
  57. Deems his own merit the attraction.”

 Rowland Eyes Egerton-Warburton. Egerton-Warburton: Poems, Epigrams and Sonnets. London: Basil Montagu Pickering (1877).

EPIGRAMS

  1. QUEEN’S PIG
  2.  
  3. OF old, when the church-building coffer was full, **
  4. Ere the work was begun, they requir’d a Pope’s Bull;
  5. Nowaday, when supremacy rests with the Whig,
  6. Congregational chapels require a Queen’s pig!

** On hearing that two pigs from the Home Park, Windsor had been presented, by command of Her Majesty, for the benefit of the Building Fund of the Victoria Congregational Chapel (1864).


  1.  
  2. CROSS-QUESTIONING
  3.  
  4. HIS wardrobe from Moses and Son, spic and span,
  5. The witness stood up, quite an exquisite man:
  6. “A broker, I think, Sir, and worth a Jew’s eye ?”
  7. “I ham, Sir, I ham,” the emphatic reply.
  8. “And indeed,” said the Counsel, “it must be confest
  9. I ne’er in my life saw a ham better drest.”
 Rambling Richard. Epigrams and Humorous Verses. London: Longmans, Green and Co. (1867).

About the Poet:

Rowland Eyles Egerton-Warburton, England, (1804-1891) was a poet and landowner in Cheshire, England whose main hobby was hunting. He was a devout Anglican in the high church tradition and a local benefactor. In his poetry he often used the pseudonym of “Rambling Richard.” [DES-09/19]