oor Sherry, inglorious,
To Dan the victorious,
Presents, as 'tis fitting,
Petition and greeting.

To you, victorious and brave,
Your now subdued and suppliant slave
Most humbly sues for pardon;
Who when I fought still cut me down,
And when I vanquish'd, fled the town
Pursued and laid me hard on.

Now lowly crouch'd, I cry _peccavi_,
And prostrate, supplicate _pour ma vie_;
Your mercy I rely on;
For you my conqueror and my king,
In pardoning, as in punishing,
Will show yourself a lion.

Alas! sir, I had no design,
But was unwarily drawn in;
For spite I ne'er had any;
'Twas the damn'd squire with the hard name;
The de'il too that owed me a shame,
The devil and Delany;

They tempted me t' attack your highness,
And then, with wonted wile and slyness,
They left me in the lurch:
Unhappy wretch! for now, I ween,
I've nothing left to vent my spleen
But ferula and birch:

And they, alas! yield small relief,
Seem rather to renew my grief,
My wounds bleed all anew:
For every stroke goes to my heart
And at each lash I feel the smart
Of lash laid on by you.

[Footnote 1: Juvenalis, Sat. iii, 288.--_W. E. B._]

THE PARDON

The suit which humbly you have made
Is fully and maturely weigh'd;
And as 'tis your petition,
I do forgive, for well I know,
Since you're so bruised, another blow
Would break the head of Priscian.[1]

'Tis not my purpose or intent
That you should suffer banishment;
I pardon, now you've courted;
And yet I fear this clemency
Will come too late to profit thee,
For you're with grief transported.

However, this I do command,
That you your birch do take in hand,
Read concord and syntax on;
The bays, your own, are only mine,
Do you then still your nouns decline,
Since you've declined Dan Jackson.

[Footnote 1: The Roman grammarian, who flourished about A.D. 450, and has
left a work entitled "Commentariorum grammaticorum Libri
xviii."--_W. E. B._]

THE LAST SPEECH AND DYING WORDS
OF DANIEL JACKSON

MY DEAR COUNTRYMEN,

--mediocribus esse poetis
Non funes, non gryps, non concessere columnae.[1]

To give you a short translation of these two lines from Horace's Art of
Poetry, which I have chosen for my neck-verse, before I proceed to my
speech, you will find they fall naturally into this sense:

For poets who can't tell [high] rocks from stones,
The rope, the hangman, and the gallows groans.

I was born in a fen near t