'Seven Oaks,' and then 'Se'nnoak,'
Lastly Snook,
Is the way my name I trace:
Shall a youth of noble race
In affairs of love give place
To a Cooke?"
"Clifford Snook, I know thy claim
To that lineage and name,
And I think I've read the same
In Horne Tooke;
But I swear, by all divine,
Never, never to be thine,
'Till thou canst upon yon line
Walk like Cooke."
Though to that gymnastic feat
He no closer might compete
Than to strike a _balance_-sheet
In a book;
Yet thenceforward, from that day,
He his figure would display
In some wild athletic way,
After Cooke.
On some household eminence,
On a clothes-line or a fence,
Over ditches, drains, and thence
O'er a brook,
He, by high ambition led,
Ever walked and balanced;
Till the people, wondering, said,
"How like Cooke!"
Step by step did he proceed,
Nerved by valor, not by greed,
And at last the crowning deed
Undertook:
Misty was the midnight air,
And the cliff was bleak and bare,
When he came to do and dare
Just like Cooke.
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