Salmagundi; or, The whim-whams and opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, esq. [pseud.] and others. By William Irving, James Kirke Paulding and Washington Irving. Printed from the original ed., with a preface and notes by Evert A. Duyckinck.

46 SALMAGUNDI.
Of graces that snug in soft ambush would lie;
And the heart, like the poets, in thought would pursue
The elysium of bliss which was veiled from its view.
We are old-fashion'd fellows, our nieces will say:
Old-fashioned, indeed, coz —and swear it they mayFor I freely confess that it yields me no pride,
To see them all blaze what their mothers would hide:
To see them, all shivering, some cold winter's day,
So lavish their beauties and graces display,
And give to each fopling that offers his hand,
Like Moses from Pisgah-a peep at the land.
But a truce with complaining-the object in view
Is to offer my help in the work you pursue;
And as your effusions and labors sublime,
May need, now and then, a few touches of rhyme,
I humbly solicit, as cousin and friend,
A quiddity, quirk, or remonstrance to send:
Or should you a laureate want in your plan,
By the muff of my grandmother, I am your man!
You must know I have got a poetical mill,
Which with odd lines, and couplets, and triplets I fill;
And a poem I grind, as from rags white and blue
The paper-mill yields you a sheet fair and new.
I can grind down an ode, or an epic that's long,
Into sonnet, acrostic, conundrum, or song:
As to dull hudibrastic, so boasted of late,
The doggrel discharge of some muddle-brain'd pate,
I can grind it by wholesale-and give it its point,
With billingsgate dished up in rhymes out of joint.
I have read all the poets-and got them by heart,
Can slit them, and twist them, and take them apart;