'Tis not to wonder at, in such a case, If she put by the pill-box in a place For linen rather than for drugs intended-- Yet for the credit of the pills let's say After they thus were stow'd away, Some of the linen mended; But Mrs. W. by disease's dint, Kept getting still more yellow in her tint, When lo! her second son, like elder brother, Marking the hue on the parental gills, Brought a new charge of Anti-tumeric Pills, To bleach the jaundiced visage of his mother-- Who took them--in her cupboard--like the other.
"Deeper and deeper still", of course, The fatal colour daily grew in force; Till daughter W. newly come from Rome, Acting the self-same filial, pillial, part, To cure Mamma, another dose brought home Of Cockles;--not the Cockles of her heart! These going where the others went before, Of course she had a very pretty store; And then--some hue of health her cheek adorning, The medicine so good must be, They brought her dose on dose, which she Gave to the up-stairs cupboard, "night and morning". Till wanting room at last, for other stocks, Out of the window one fine day she pitch'd The pillage of each box, and quite enrich'd The feed of Mister Burrell's hens and cocks,-- A little Barber of a by-gone day, Over the way Whose stock in trade, to keep the least of shops, Was one great head of Kemble,--that is, John, Staring in plaster, with a Brutus on, And twenty little Bantam fowls--with crops. Little Dame W. thought when through the sash She gave the physic wings, To find the very things So good for bile, so bad for chicken rash, For thoughtless cock, and unreflecting pullet! But while they gathered up the nauseous nubbles, Each peck'd itself into a peck of troubles, And brought the hand of Death upon its gullet. They might as well have addled been, or ratted, For long before the night--ah woe betide The Pills! each suicidal Bantam died Unfatted!
Think of poor Burrel's shock, Of Nature's debt to see his hens all payers, And laid in death as Everlasting Layers, With Bantam's small Ex-Emperor, the Cock, In ruffled plumage and funereal hackle, Giving, undone by Cockle, a last Cackle! To see as stiff as stone, his un'live stock, It really was enough to move his block. Down on the floor he dash'd, with horror big, Mr. Bell's third wife's mother's coachman's wig; And with a tragic stare like his own Kemble, Burst out with natural emphasis enough, And voice that grief made tremble, Into that very speech of sad Macduff-- "What!--all my pretty chickens and their dam, At one fell swoop!-- Just when I'd bought a coop To see the poor lamented creatures cram!"