Читать книгу Terrible Tractoration, and Other Poems онлайн

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Confound your stuff!—why how you sweat me!

I’d rather swallow all mount Etna!

How swiftly turns this giddy world round,

Like tortur’d top, by truant twirl’d round;

While Nature’s capers wild amaze me,

The beldam’s crack’d or Caustic crazy![7]

I’m larger grown from head to tail

Than mammoth, elephant, or whale!—

Now feel a “tangible extension”

Of semi-infinite dimension!—

Inflated with supreme intensity,

I fill three quarters of immensity!

Should Phœbus come this way, no doubt,

But I could blow his candle out!

This earth’s a little dirty planet,

And I’ll no longer help to man it,

But off will flutter, in a tangent,

And make a harum scarum range on’t!

Stand ye appall’d! quake! quiver! quail!

For lo I stride a comet’s tail!

If my deserts you fail t’ acknowledge,

I’ll drive it plump against your college!

But if your Esculapian band

Approach my highness, cap in hand,

And show vast tokens of humility,

I’ll treat your world with due civility.

But now, alas! a wicked wag

Has pull’d away the gaseous bag: