Page:Two Mock Epics (Hanuman and Tantum Religio), Lyrics, Post Meridian Verse, The Turret Captain's Toast and other Verses.pdf/126

 Two water rockets cannonading

Bear off two wigs that spurt and frizzle

Screwed fast upon the palisading

That fronts the house, some inches higher

Than the long flickering tongues of fire.

And faster now those watery rockets

Go spluttering all among the masses,

Now sousing heads, now emptying pockets,

Till all begin to bray like asses

And then stampede diramifying

As rays through clouds when suns are dying.

This simile, I hold’s, Miltonic,

And greatly dignifies the matter,

Being both appropriate and euphonic,

Clouds are but firemen, suns to spatter,

And ’tis a rule to shun the bathos

By likening limpets to Mount Athos.

Howe’er this be, the crowd stampeded

With better halves at home to shelter,

Such and what household words succeeded

This unheroic helter-skelter

For fustians spoiled:—’twere as irrelevant

To introduce here as an elephant.

Now fizzles out the last faint sparkle

From the drenched logs and firewood humid

And glimmering twilight ’gins to darkle

And lampless streets, in mire and gloom hid,

The fire is spent: the saints are dozing

Indoors, below the day is closing.

Far down the mist-dank roadway dwindle

Hose, firemen, engine, Fuchs and flagon,

And lurid clouds to westward kindle,