Death in the pipe, death in the faucet, Death in the deadly water-closet! A day is set for all to die: Caveat emptor! what care I?”
As to Amphion’s tuneful kit Troy rose, with towers encircling it; As to the Mage’s brandished wand A spiry palace clove the sand; To Thin’s indomitable financing, That phantom crescent kept advancing. When first the brazen bells of churches Called clerk and parson to their perches, The worshippers of every sect Already viewed it with respect; A second Sunday had not gone Before the roof was rattled on: And when the fourth was there, behold The crescent finished, painted, sold!
The stars proceeded in their courses, Nature with her subversive forces, Time, too, the iron-toothed and sinewed; And the edacious years continued. Thrones rose and fell; and still the crescent, Unsanative and now senescent, A plastered skeleton of lath, Looked forward to a day of wrath. In the dead night, the groaning timber Would jar upon the ear of slumber, And, like Dodona’s talking oak, Of oracles and judgments spoke. When to the music fingered well The feet of children lightly fell, The sire, who dozed by the decanters, Started, and dreamed of misadventures. The rotten brick decayed to dust; The iron was consumed by rust; Each tabid and perverted mansion Hung in the article of declension.
So forty, fifty, sixty passed; Until, when seventy came at last, The occupant of number three Called friends to hold a jubilee. Wild was the night; the charging rack Had forced the moon upon her back; The wind piped up a naval ditty; And the lamps winked through all the city. Before that house, where lights were shining, Corpulent feeders, grossly dining, And jolly clamour, hum and rattle, Fairly outvoiced the tempest’s battle. As still his moistened lip he fingered, The envious policeman lingered; While far the infernal tempest sped, And shook the country folks in bed, And tore the trees and tossed the ships, He lingered and he licked his lips.