University of Virginia Library

Have you observ'd a bubble swell,
Which children blow up in a shell,
Of soap and spittle, how it flies,
And dazzles their attending eyes,
But when it fills them most with wonder,
The seeming something bursts asunder,
And what look'd pretty, full and fair
But erst, evanishes in air?
So, when the wind, that had been pent
Within her guts, had got a vent,
And forc'd its passage by the rump,
The Mare, who look'd both fat and plump,
And had no lirk in all her leather,
More than what's in a full blown bladder,
No sooner had the vapour past
Through postern, with a blustring blast,
Which circumambient air perfum'd,
As may be very well presum'd,
With scent that was not aromatick,
And which turn'd many heads lunatick,
And made them, in this sad conundrum,
To hang an arse, and look right humdrum,
With surly, sour, and odd grimaces,
You'd know them by their gloomy faces;
The Mare, I say, when wind got vent,
Look'd lean like butchers dogs in lent;
The South-sea ware had purg'd her so,
That she could neither stand nor go.
This backward blast and tempest, Nota
Bene, wreck'd all the South-sea Flota;
Rent all their rigging, crack'd their keels,
And kick'd up all the sailors heels,
Who, tumbling, lay in great dejection,
Without hopes of a resurrection.
The Mare was in a peck of troubles,
As having nought but dilse and bubbles
To fill her paunch; for from her mangers
The hay was carried off by strangers;
Her strength was spent, her substance gone,
And nought remain'd but skin and bone;
To make her misery complete,
Tho' she had nothing now to eat,
More loads were heap'd upon her back,
Which made the poor beast's bones to crack.