Читать книгу Terrible Tractoration, and Other Poems онлайн

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Bids bullying phantom hie away;

While horror makes each hair stand steadfast,

Like quill of hedgehog in our head fast!

So stood the Premier of your nation,

When Robson bawl’d out “Defalcation!

Government’s robb’d by wicked men,

And cannot pay NINETEEN POUNDS TEN”!!![65]

So petrified stood bull and bear,

Of Stock Exchange, when the lord mayor,

With vile chagrin and terror quaking,

Found Hawkesbury’s letter all a take-in.[66]

Now should you slight the dire monition

Of this ill boding apparition,

You truly will be well deserving

The dreadful destiny of starving!

O then, dread sirs, brimful of rage,

War! horrid war! is yours to wage,

To extirpate the deadly schism,

The heresy of Perkinism!

Pursue the steps that learned sage hath,

The most redoubted doctor Haygarth,

Who erst o’er Perkins’s sconce at Bath,

Broke a whole gallipot of wrath![67]

Oh! could I sing Haygarth’s chef d’œuvre,

That mighty magical manœuvre,

That feat, thn which, you’ll own, if candid,

None greater ever mortal man did!

But ere I “sweep the sounding lyre,”