Читать книгу Terrible Tractoration, and Other Poems онлайн

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From east, west, north and south I rake ’em,

And when not ready made—I make them!!

Thus, for posterity’s behoof,

We’ve made our systems bullet proof:

Assailing us with ire red hot,

Is battering walls with pigeon shot.

But I, in spite of my renown,

Alas! am harrass’d, hunted down;

Completely damn’d, the simple fact is,

By Perkins’s Metallic Practice![49]

Our should-be wise and learn’d societies

Are guilty of great improprieties,

In treating me in manner scandalous,

As if I were a very Vandal; thus

Determined, as I have no doubt,

My sun of genius to put out,

Which, once extinct, they think that so ’tis

Their glow-worm lights may claim some notice.

Such hum-drum heads and hollow hearts

Pretend, forsooth, t’ encourage arts!

But that pretence, in every sense is

The flimsiest of all pretences.

Those noble spirited Macenases

To me have shown the greatest meannesses;

Have granted me for these things said all,

Not one half-penny, nor a medal!!!

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