Читать книгу Terrible Tractoration, and Other Poems онлайн

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From heaven, where thron’d, like Jove I sat,

I’m fall’n! fall’n! fall’n! down, flat! flat! flat![8]

Thus, as the ancient story goes,

When o’er Avernus flew the crows,

They were so stench’d in half a minute,

They giddy grew and tumbled in it:

And thus a blade, who is too handy

To help himself to wine or brandy,

At first gets higher, then gets lower,

Then tumbles dead drunk on the floor!

Such would have been my sad case, if

I’d taken half another tiff;

And even now, I cannot swear,

I’m not as mad as a March hare!

How these confounded gases serve us!

But Beddoes says that I am nervous,

And that this oxyd gas of nitre

Is bad for such a nervous writer!

Indeed, Sir, Doctor, very odd it is

That you should deal in such commodities,

Which drive a man beside his wits,

And women to hysteric fits![9]

Now, since this wildering gas inflation

Is not the thing for inspiration,

I’ll take a glass of cordial gin,

Ere my sad story I begin;

And then proceed with courage stout,

From “hard-bound brains” to hammer out