The poetical works of John Godfrey Saxe :: :: University of Virginia Library

Near Lake Mohrin 'tis said, by day and night,
The folks all tremble with unceasing fright
Lest the Great Crab, we all have heard about,
By some device should manage to get out!
He 's fastened down below, you see,
And in the strongest way;
For, should he happen to get free,
The deuce would be to pay!

II.

An ugly monster of prodigious strength,
A mile in breadth and twenty miles in length,
He keeps the water foaming in the lake,
And, once on land, what trouble he would make!
For with his backward motion (so
An ancient seer declares)
All other things would backward go,
Throughout the world's affairs.

III.

The Burgomaster—mightiest of men—
Would turn, that day, a sucking child again;
The Judge and Parson, changed to little boys,
Would quit their learned books for tiny toys;
And so with matrons, maids, and men,
All things would be reversed;
And everything go back again
To what it was at first.

IV.

Such mischief to the people! While they eat,
Back to the plate will go the smoking meat,
And thence to pot! The bread will turn again
To flour; flour go back once more to grain.
Back to the flax (O sight of shame!)
Will go the linen shirt;
The flax return to whence it came,
A linseed in the dirt.

V.

The timber in the house at once will move
As trees again back to the primal grove;
The hens will turn to chickens, in a crack,
The chicks into the eggs again go back,

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And these the Great Crab with his tail,
At one prodigious crash,
Will knock, as with a threshing-flail,
To everlasting smash!

VI.

Now Heaven defend us from so dire a fate!
The world, I think, is doing well of late;
And for the Crab, let all good people pray
That in his lake he evermore may stay!
Else even this poor song (alack!
How very sad to think!)
With all the rest must needs go back,
And be a drop of ink!