University of Virginia Library

The emblems of this club were simple, very,
And made unthinking minds unduly merry:
A rooster, sheep, and duck, of lofty manners,
Comprised the heraldry upon their banners
(The first-named animals that history mentions
That were addicted to balloon ascensions,
Before men made of fear so great a stranger
That they themselves incurred aerial danger);
Their walls bore prints of men of every nation
Who'd overcome the curse of gravitation:
Of Dædalus, ingenious artist-Grecian—
Who made him wings, with wax their sole cohesion;
Escaped Crete's monarch's rage-compounded virus,
And flew to Sicily (upon papyrus);
Of Icarus, his son, who started nicely
Equipped, it seems, with similar wings precisely;
But making, for ambition or diversion,
A sunward trip—a little branch excursion—
Found that the sun of wing-wax was a melter,
And dropped into the ocean, helter-skelter;
Of old Archytas, who made, with much trying,
A pigeon out of wood, and set it flying
(Which should have less in webs of wonder wound us,
Than genuine live ones floating all around us);
Of Roger Bacon, who by book suggested
That lofty navigation should be tested;
Thought we could sail, with proper means and motion,
Top of the air, the same as of the ocean;
And, daring sceptic earth-worms to deny it,
Was sagely anxious some one else should try it;
Of those French aeronauts, Montgolfier Brothers,
Who also left their goings up to others;