Читать книгу Terrible Tractoration, and Other Poems онлайн

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Old Neptune’s realm, ’tis our intent,

To make a Yankee-settlement,

And if Britannia interferes[31]

We’il twist her ugly lion’s ears.

An Iceland burning mountain’s gorge

We metamorphos’d to a forge,

And made therein as many as

Ten thousand tons of solid gas.

This we can let off at our leisure,

Like Shakspeare’s conjurer, wield at pleasure

The explosive elements of thunder,

With power to rive the globe asunder.

And if the theory of Babbage[32]

Is worth a single head of cabbage,

This grand plenipotent gas of ours

Will supersede all moving powers.

With this will drive aerial cars,

Send hourly coaches to the stars,

A lightning opposition line

Would be a snail compared to mine.

We seized the moon, by mickle strength,

And brought her down, within arm’s length,—

And made her, under our protection,

Submit to critical inspection.

Her Natural History and Topography,

With plates of Pendleton’s lithography,

We mean to print and publish soon,

And call it Mirror of the Moon.

Like us, was never man besides