THE COMET

THE Comet! He is on his way,

And singing as he flies;

The whizzing planets shrink before

The spectre of the skies;

Ah! well may regal orbs burn blue,

And satellites turn pale,

Ten million cubic miles of head,

Ten billion leagues of tail!

On, on by whistling spheres of light

He flashes and he flames;

He turns not to the left nor right,

He asks them not their names;

One spurn from his demoniac heel,—

Away, away they fly,

Where darkness might be bottled up

And sold for “Tyrian dye.”

And what would happen to the land,

And how would look the sea,

If in the bearded devil's path

Our earth should chance to be?

Full hot and high the sea would boil,

Full red the forests gleam;

Methought I saw and heard it all

In a dyspeptic dream!

I saw a tutor take his tube

The Comet's course to spy;

I heard a scream,— the gathered rays

Had stewed the tutor's eye;

I saw a fort,— the soldiers all

Were armed with goggles green;

Pop cracked the guns! whiz flew the balls!

Bang went the magazine!

I saw a poet dip a scroll

Each moment in a tub,

I read upon the warping back,

“The Dream of Beelzebub;”

He could not see his verses burn,

Although his brain was fried,

And ever and anon he bent

To wet them as they dried.

I saw the scalding pitch roll down

The crackling, sweating pines,

And streams of smoke, like water-spouts,

Burst through the rumbling mines;

I asked the firemen why they made

Such noise about the town;

They answered not,— but all the while

The brakes went up and down.

I saw a roasting pullet sit

Upon a baking egg;

I saw a cripple scorch his hand

Extinguishing his leg;

I saw nine geese upon the wing

Towards the frozen pole,

And every mother's gosling fell

Crisped to a crackling coal.

I saw the ox that browsed the grass

Writhe in the blistering rays,

The herbage in his shrinking jaws

Was all a fiery blaze;

I saw huge fishes, boiled to rags,

Bob through the bubbling brine;

And thoughts of supper crossed my soul;

I had been rash at mine.

Strange sights! strange sounds! Oh fearful dream!

Its memory haunts me still,

The steaming sea, the crimson glare,

That wreathed each wooded hill;

Stranger! if through thy reeling brain

Such midnight visions sweep,

Spare, spare, oh, spare thine evening meal,

And sweet shall be thy sleep!