Читать книгу Terrible Tractoration, and Other Poems онлайн

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“’Tis not from motives of endearment

That I have burst my marble cearment;

No; I’m from Hades, in a hurry,

To make above ground one d—d flurry![64]

“Arm’d, as the dread occasion urges,

With Ate’s borrow’d snakes and scourges,

I come to rouse ye into action,

To crush the Perkinising faction.

“I tell you, these detested tractors,

The worst of Satan’s manufactures,

Will set themselves to supersede us,

Will even blister, cup, and bleed us;

“And they’ll be used as diuretics,

Cathartics, anodynes, emetics,

And will begin, before they’re done,

To tap for dropsy, cut for stone.

“The self-same metal, it is said,

With friar Bacon’s brazen head,

Each point’s a more mysterious thing

Than Goodman Gyges’ brazen ring.

“And they will mend a wooden leg

Much better than a walnut peg,

Will make a rogue a pair of ears,

Who’s had them clipp’d by Justice’s shears.

“Make Hydra heads spring up, I ween,

For people shaved by guillotine;

Thus force our freedom loving neighbors

To recommence their humane labors.

“Why stand ye now, with stupid stare,