CHORUS As before the pike will fly Dace and roach and such small fry; As the leaf before the gale, As the chaff beneath the flail; As before the wolf the flocks, As before the hounds the fox; As before the cat the mouse, As the rat from falling house; As the fiend before the spell Of holy water, book, and bell; As the ghost from dawning day,-- So has fled, in gaunt dismay, This septemvirate of quacks From the shadowy attacks Of Coeur-de-Lion's battle-axe.
[Illustration: Coeur-de-Lion's battle-axe. 260-221]
Could he in corporeal might, Plain to feeling as to sight, Rise again to solar light, How his arm would put to flight All the forms of Stygian night That round us rise in grim array, Darkening the meridian day: Bigotry, whose chief employ Is embittering earthly joy; Chaos, throned in pedant state, Teaching echo how to prate; And 'Ignorance, with looks profound,' Not 'with eye that loves the ground,' But stalking wide, with lofty crest, In science's pretentious vest.
And now, great masters of the realms of shade, To end the task which called us down from air, We shall present, in pictured show arrayed, Of this your modern world the triumphs rare,
That Gryllus's benighted spirit May wake to your transcendent merit, And, with profoundest admiration thrilled, He may with willing mind assume his place In your steam-nursed, steam-borne, steam-killed, And gas-enlightened race.
I see the ocean, And o'er its face ships passing wide and far; Some with expanded sails before the breeze, And some with neither sails nor oars, impelled By some invisible power against the wind, Scattering the spray before them, But of many One is on fire, and one has struck on rocks And melted in the waves like fallen snow. Two crash together in the middle sea, And go to pieces on the instant, leaving No soul to tell the tale, and one is hurled In fragments to the sky, strewing the deep With death and wreck. I had rather live with Circe Even as I was, than flit about the world In those enchanted ships which some Alastor Must have devised as traps for mortal ruin.
Now the whole scene is changed. I see long chains of strange machines on wheels, With one in front of each, purring white smoke From a black hollow column. Fast and far They speed, like yellow leaves before the gale, When autumn winds are strongest. Through their windows I judge them thronged with people; but distinctly Their speed forbids my seeing.