Читать книгу Terrible Tractoration, and Other Poems онлайн

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To make a drunkard burn like tinder,

And change a nuisance to a cinder.

The devil, as Milton represented,

Gunpowder, long ago invented;

But genius always finds its level,

And man, of course, has beaten the devil.

The wight, who alcohol found out,

Surpass’d the fiend, beyond a doubt;

He, therefore, merits more renown,

And ought to wear a hotter crown.

We live on vegetable diet,

And will not let a man be quiet,

Unless the evidence is ample

That he is copying our example.

Though brother Graham, it is said,

Stuffs christians with unbolted bread,

Our belly timber, quite as good,

Is made of any kind of wood.[24]

You know the common farmer takes

His white oak wood for fencing stakes,

But Lady Caustic fits in style,

Superior white oak steaks, to broil.

She’s famous, too, for white oak cheese,

Harder than granite, ten degrees;

So hard that we’re obliged to take it

To some trip-hammer works to break it.

Good hemlock bark philosophized

In soup, by epicures is prized,

A paste of button-wood, quoth I,