The Poetical Writings of Fitz-Greene Halleck/Epistle to Robert Hogbin, Esq.
EPISTLE TO ROBERT HOGBIN, ESQ.,
Chairman of the Committee of Working-Men, etc., at
the Westchester Hotel, Bowery, Nov., 1830.
r. Hogbin,—I work as a weaver—of rhyme—
And therefore presume with a working-man’s grace,
To address you as one I have liked for some time,
Though I know not (no doubt it’s a fine one) your face.
There is much in a name, and I’ll lay you a wager
(Two ale-jugs from Reynolds’66), that Nature designed,
When she formed you, that you should become the drum-major
In that choice piece of music, the Grand March of Mind.
A Hogbin! a Hogbin! how cheering the shout
Of all that keep step to that beautiful air,
Which leads, like the treadmill, about and about,
And leaves us exactly, at last, where we were!
Yes, there’s much in a name, and a Hogbin’s so fit is
For that great moral purpose whose impulse divine
Bids men leave their own workshops to work in committees,
And their own wedded wives to protect yours and mine!
That we working-men prophets are sadly mistaken,
If yours is not, Hogbin, a durable fame,
As lasting as England’s philosopher Bacon,
Whom your ancestors housed, if we judge by his name.
When the moment arrives that we’ve won the good fight,
And broken the chains of laws, churches, and marriages,
When no infants are born under six feet in height,
And our chimney-sweeps mount up a flue in their carriages—
That glorious time when our daughters and sons
Enjoy a blue Monday each day of the week,
And a clean shirt is classed with the mastodon’s bones,
Or a mummy from Thebes, an undoubted antique—
Then, then, my dear Hogbin, your statue in straw,
By some modern Pigmalion delightfully wrought,
Shall embellish the Park, and our youths’ only law
Shall be to be Hogbins in feeling and thought.
H.