“A thing of sound (not fury)

Signifying nothing.”

When I am weary of my Mother-tongue,

In which I learn’d to read and spell, when young;

Or speak , and write , and am not understood,

As heretofore, by my own flesh and blood;

When Chaucer's Tales, and Spenser's Fairy Lay,

As worn-out legends shall have pass’d away;

When universal Shakespeare's page profound

Shall be a thing to criticise by sound;

And Milton's Song, caught from a higher sphere,

Hath lost its music to my palsied ear;

When they who, by new crotchets unbeguil’d,

Drank from the well of English undefil’d,

Bards, Statesmen, Orators, and grave Divines,

Whose memories live in their immortal lines;

When these, by some new-fangled strange conceit,

Shall, with their works be counted obsolete,

Then, not before, I may for truth receive

All modern babblers ask me to believe!

Nor can I look upon as more inviting,

The novel characters you give for writing;

I’m child enough, and hope such long to be,

To have a likingfor my A B C;

And to our antiquated Alphabet

Owe a long-standing and long-cherished debt.

Its old familiar aspect, to mine eye,

No hieroglyphic symbols can supply;

Sprawls, scratches, dashes, spider-legs, and lines,

To me are unintelligible signs;

Upright or sloping, this or that way leaning,

They speak no language, and convey no meaning.

But the New System saves much time. Indeed!

Must we then write, read, spell, by rail-road speed

’Tis bad enough, whene’er we go abroad,

That fire and smoke must urge us on our road,

And, for the music of the birds and spheres,

To have that horrid whistle din our ears;

Must we not ride , alone, as if we flew,

But the same haste adopt in all we do?

“More haste worse speed ,”— the proverb still holds true!

I wish that Pitman, Reid, and all their crew,

Or better taste, or better manners knew;

To one accustomed to the olden lore

Their boasted System is a dreadful bore,

Through trumpeted with empty acclamation

A READING, Writing , Printing , REFOEMATION!