Swift flew the summons,—­it was life or death! 
And in as short a time as he could race it, Came Doctor Puddicome, as short of breath,
To try his Latin charms against Hic Jacet.  He took a seat beside the patient’s bed, Saw tongue—­felt pulse—­examined the bad cheek,—­ Poked, strok’d, pinch’d, kneaded it—­hemm’d—­
      shook his head—­
Took a long solemn pause the cause to seek,
      (Thinking, it seem’d in Greek,)
Then ask’d—­’twas Christmas—­“Had he eaten grass, Or greens—­and if the cook was so improper
      To boil them up with copper,
      Or farthings made of brass;
Or if he drank his Hock from dark green glass,
    Or dined at City Festivals, whereat
    There’s turtle, and green fat?”
To all of which, with serious tone of woe,
      Poor Simpson answered “No,”
Indeed he might have said in form auricular,
    Supposing Puddicome had been a monk—­
He had not eaten (he had only drunk)
      Of anything “Particular.” 
      The Doctor was at fault;
A thing so new quite brought him to a halt. 
Cases of other colors came in crowds,
  He could have found their remedy, and soon;
But green—­it sent him up among the clouds,
  As if he had gone up with Green’s balloon!

Black with Black Jaundice he had seen the skin;
    From Yellow Jaundice yellow,
    From saffron tints to sallow;—­
Then retrospective memory lugg’d in
Old Purple Face, the Host at Kentish Town—­
    East Indians, without number,
He knew familiarly, by heat done Brown,
    From tan to a burnt umber,
  Ev’n those eruptions he had never seen
Of which the Caledonian Poet spoke,
    As “rashes growing green”—­
    “Phoo! phoo! a rash grow green! 
Nothing of course, but a broad Scottish joke!”
Then as to flaming visages, for those
The Scarlet Fever answer’d, or the Rose—­
But verdant! that was quite a novel stroke! 
Men turn’d to blue, by Cholera’s last stage,
  In common practice he had really seen;
But Green—­he was too old, and grave, and sage,
  To think of the last stage to Turnham Green!

So matters stood in-doors—­meanwhile without,
  Growing in going like all other rumors,
The modern miracle was buzz’d about,
      By people of all humors,
  Native or foreign in their dialecticals;
Till all the neighborhood, as if their noses
Had taken the odd gross from little Moses,
  Seemed looking thro’ green spectacles. 
“Green faces!” so they all began to comment—­
  “Yes—­opposite to Druggists’ lighted shops,
  But that’s a flying color—­never stops—­
A bottle-green that’s vanish’d in a moment. 
  Green! nothing of the sort occurs to mind,
Nothing at all to match the present piece;
  Jack in the Green has nothing of the kind—­
Green-grocers are not green—­nor yet green geese!”
The oldest Supercargoes or Old Sailors
    Of such a case had never heard,
    From Emerald Isle to Cape de Verd;
“Or Greenland!” cried the whalers. 
All tongues were full of the Green Man, and still
They could not make him out with all their skill;
No soul could shape the matter, head or tail—­
But Truth steps in where all conjectures fail.