Читать книгу Terrible Tractoration, and Other Poems онлайн

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To patch up Frenchmen kill’d in Italy,

Though shot, or stabb’d, or hack’d with fell blows,

As wives patch coats when out at elbows!

Profoundly versed in chymic science,

I could bid matter’s law defiance;

Was up to nature, or beyond her,

In mimic earthquakes, rain, and thunder![28]

And by a shock of electricity,

(I tell the truth without duplicity)

I did (what won’t again be soon done)

E’en fairly knock the man in the moon down![29]

On ocean’s bottom we can travel,

Thorough mud and thorough gravel;

While over head hoarse tempests hurtle

With more adroitness than a turtle.

Priestly first caused our head to teem

With this most eligible scheme,

Supplied us vital air, which stuff

We took like macaroni snuff.[30]

Encamp’d beneath a huge ice island,

For nineteen years we didn’t come nigh land,

And could have staid, as well as not,

E’en had the sea been boiling hot.

In car triumphant, drawn by whales,

Tackled to their tremendous tails,

We rode sublime, and claim’d a right

To everything which hove in sight.