ODE TO PERRY,
THE INVENTOR OF THE PATENT PERRYAN PEN.
“In this good work, Penn appears the greatest, usefullest of God’s instruments. Firm and unbending when the exigency requires it—soft and yielding when rigid inflexibility is not a desideratum, fluent and flowing, at need, for eloquent rapidity—slow and retentive in cases of deliberation—never spluttering or by amplification going wide of the mark—never splitting, if it can be helped, with any one, but ready to wear itself out rather in their service—all things as it were with all men, ready to embrace the hand of Jew, Christian or Mahometan,—heavy with the German, light with the Italian, oblique with the English, upright with the Roman, backward in coming forward with the Hebrew,—in short, for flexibility, amiability, constitutional durability, general ability, and universal utility, it would be hard to find a parallel to the great Penn.”
PERRY’S CHARACTERISTICS OF A SETTLER.
I.
O! Patent, Pen-inventing Perrian Perry!
Friend of the Goose and Gander,
That now unplucked of their quill-feathers wander,
Cackling, and gabbling, dabbling, making merry,
About the happy Fen,
Untroubled for one penny-worth of pen,
For which they chant thy praise all Britain through,
From Goose-Green unto Gander-Cleugh!—
II.
Friend to all Author-kind—
Whether of Poet or of Proser,—
Thou art composer unto the composer
Of pens,—yea, patent vehicles for Mind
To carry it on jaunts, or more extensive
Perrygrinations through the realms of Thought;
Each plying from the Comic to the Pensive,
An Omnibus of intellectual sort!
[Pg 133]
III.
Modern Improvements in their course we feel;
And while to iron-railroads heavy wares,
Dry goods, and human bodies, pay their fares,
Mind flies on steel,
To Penrith, Penrhyn, even to Penzance.
Nay, penetrates, perchance,
To Pennsylvania, or without rash vaunts,
To where the Penguin haunts!
IV.
In times bygone, when each man cut his quill
With little Perryan skill,
What horrid, awkward, bungling tools of trade
Appear’d the writing implements home-made!
What Pens were sliced, hew’d, hack’d, and haggled out,
Slit or unslit, with many a various snout,
Aquiline, Roman, crooked, square, and snubby,
Stumpy and stubby;
Some capable of ladye-billets neat,
Some only fit for Ledger-keeping Clerk,
And some to grub down Peter Stubbs his mark,
Or smudge through some illegible receipt;
Others in florid caligraphic plans,
Equal to Ships, and wiggy Heads, and Swans!
V.
To try in any common inkstands, then,
With all their miscellaneous stocks,
To find a decent pen,
Was like a dip into a lucky box:
You drew,—and got one very curly,
And split like endive in some hurly-burly;
[Pg 134]
The next, unslit, and square at end, a spade;
The third, incipient pop-gun, not yet made;
The fourth a broom; the fifth of no avail,
Turn’d upwards, like a rabbit’s tail;
And last, not least, by way of a relief,
A stump that Master Richard, James, or John,
Had tried his candle-cookery upon,
Making “roast-beef!”
VI.
Not so thy Perryan Pens!
True to their M’s and N’s,
They do not with a whizzing zig-zag split,
Straddle, turn up their noses, sulk, and spit,
Or drop large dots,
Huge fullstop blots,
Where even semicolons were unfit.
They will not frizzle up, or, broom-like, drudge
In sable sludge—
Nay, bought at proper “Patent Perryan” shops,
They write good grammar, sense, and mind their stops;
Compose both prose and verse, the sad or merry—
For when the Editor, whose pains compile
The grown-up Annual, or the Juvenile,
Vaunteth his articles, not women’s, men’s,
But lays “by the most celebrated Pens,”
What means he but thy Patent Pens, my Perry?
VII.
Pleasant they are to feel!
So firm! so flexible! composed of steel
So finely temper’d—fit for tenderest Miss
To give her passion breath,
Or Kings to sign the warrant stern of death—
[Pg 135]