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;