Page:Two Mock Epics (Hanuman and Tantum Religio), Lyrics, Post Meridian Verse, The Turret Captain's Toast and other Verses.pdf/82

 Star-spangled—most appropriate mordaunt—

Smiles blandly on the rag-clad scene

To think her dupes can be so verdant.

For th’ apparatus so constructed is

That whatsoever there eructed is

Shot down into that Holy of Holies

Is irrecoverable, as coal is

Shot from the truck into the cellar,

Or stars that fall from regions stellar.

In vain the twice-repentant sinner

Repents her of her vanished dinner.

Empty she crawls in tears away,

Feeling her goitres sag and play

About a neck no hair’s breadth slenderer

(Her throbbing prayers have made it tenderer).

Curses and vows she breathes in vain,

Pence Petrine don’t return again;

Already, long ere set of sun,

The capon and the priest are one.

But to return: a cretin bartered

Her services for some small pay,—

But rendered punctual to the day,—

Her juicy brain being just enlightened

Enough to find her purse strings tightened

In this world better than the burden

Bound on her hump by priests, the guerdon

Of their post-mortem paradise

To equipoise by this world’s sighs,

And for her gross, material way

Of thinking, had well nigh been martyred

By others of the goitrous clay,

Indignant she should thus aspire