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XVI.

Yes, plain to be seen,
Underneath the machine,
There dangled a mortal–some swore it was Green;
Some mason could spy;
Others named Mr. Gye;
Or Holland, compell’d by the Belgians to fly.

XVII.

‘Twas Graham the flighty,
Whom the Duke high and mighty
Resign’d to take care of his own lignum-vitae;
‘Twas Hampton, whose whim
Was in Cloudland to swim,
Till e’en Little Hampton looked little to him!

XVIII.

But all were at fault;
From the heavenly vault
The falling balloon came at last to a halt;
And bounce! with the jar
Of descending so far,
An outlandish Creature was thrown from the car!

XIX.

At first with the jolt
All his wits made a bolt,
As if he’d been flung by a mettlesome colt;
And while in his faint,
To avoid all complaint,
The muse shall endeavor his portrait to paint.

XX.

The face of this elf,
Round as platter of delf,
Was pale as if only a cast of itself;
His head had a rare
Fleece of silvery hair,
Just like the Albino at Bartlemy Fair.

XXI.

His eyes they were odd,
Like the eyes of a cod,
And gave him the look of a watery God.
His nose was a snub;
Under which, for his grub,
Was a round open mouth like to that of a chub.

XXII.

His person was small,
Without figure at all,
A plump little body as round as a ball:
With two little fins,
And a couple of pins,
With what has been christened a bow in the shins.

XXIII.

His dress it was new,
A full suit of sky-blue–
With bright silver buckles in each little shoe–
Thus painted complete,
From his head to his feet,
Conceive him laid flat in Squire Hopkins’s wheat.

XXIV.

Fine text for the crowd!
Who disputed aloud
What sort of a creature had dropp’d from the cloud–
“He’s come from o’er seas,
He’s a Cochin Chinese–
By jingo! he’s one of the wild Cherokees!”

XXV.

“Don’t nobody know?”
“He’s a young Esquimaux,
Turn’d white like the hares by the Arctical snow.”
“Some angel, my dear,
Sent from some upper spear
For Plumtree or Agnew, too good for this-here!”

XXVI.

Meanwhile with a sigh,
Having open’d one eye,
The Stranger rose up on his seat by and by;
And finding his tongue,
Thus he said, or he sung,
“Mi criky bo biggamy kickery bung!”

XXVII.

“Lord! what does he speak?”
“It’s Dog-Latin–it’s Greek!”
“It’s some sort of slang for to puzzle a Beak!”
“It’s no like the Scotch,”
Said a Scot on the watch,
“Pho! it’s nothing at all but a kind of hotch-potch!”

XXVIII.

“It’s not parly voo,”
Cried a schoolboy or two,
“Nor Hebrew at all,” said a wandering Jew.
Some held it was sprung
From the Irvingite tongue,
The same that is used by a child very young.

XXIX.

Some guess’d it high Dutch,
Others thought it had much
In sound of the true Hoky-poky-ish touch;
But none could be poz,
What the Dickins! (not Boz)
No mortal could tell what the Dickins it was!

XXX.

When who should come pat,
In a moment like that,
But Bowring, to see what the people were at–
A Doctor well able,
Without any fable,
To talk and translate all the babble of Babel.

XXXI.

So just drawing near,
With a vigilant ear,
That took ev’ry syllable in, very clear,
Before one could sip
Up a tumbler of flip,
He knew the whole tongue, from the root to the tip!