Gulliver

I'LL kick your walls to bits, I'll die scratching a tunnel,

If you'll give me a wall, if you'll give me a simple stone,

If you'll do me the honour of a dungeon—

Anything but this tyranny of sinews.

Lashed with a hundred ropes of nerve and bone

I lie, poor helpless Gulliver,

In a twopenny dock for the want of a penny,

Tied up with stuff too cheap, and strings too many.

One chain is usually sufficient for a cur.

Hair over hair, I pick my cables loose,

But still the ridiculous manacles confine me.

I snap them, swollen with sobbing. What's the use?

One hair I break, ten thousand hairs entwine me.

Love, hunger, drunkenness, neuralgia, debt,

Cold weather, hot weather, sleep and age—

If I could only unloose their spongy fingers,

I'd have a chance yet, slip through the cage.

But who ever heard of a cage of hairs?

You can't scrape tunnels in a net.

If you'd give me a chain, if you'd give me honest iron,

If you'd graciously give me a turnkey,

I could break my teeth on a chain, I could bite through metal,

But what can you do with hairs?

For God's sake, call the hangman.