The Downing legends : Stories in Rhyme :: :: University of Virginia Library

Our chief, in column after column
Of what he calls his Seckont Vollum,
Relates such brags anent this galley
That skeptic spirits dare to rally
The wonder-tale as merely fable,
A crumb purloined from Arthur's Table.
But Downing's self and Downing's labors
Are testified by trusty neighbors,
By men who sate in deacon's places,
Distinguished for their gifts and graces,
Their scholarship in orthodoxies
And zeal with contribution boxes;
And we, who take their witness kindly,
Believe his blague and quote it blindly.

“She was,” he writes, “the queerest notion
That ever wabbled round the ocean;
The awkardest sea-goin' creetur
Sence Pharaoh an' Simon Peter.
The stern an' fokesle histed uppards

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Consid'able like mons'ous cuppards,
In consequence of which her figger
Was like a crescent moon, though bigger.
She kerried every kind of wep'm
That Granther Noah took as kep'm,
From Tubal Cain's harpoons an' hammers
To muskets made by Amsterdammers,
With cannons built of wroughten metal
No thicker than a potash kettle,
A sight more suitable for bustin'
Than givin enemies a dustin'.”