The Domicile Erected by John.
Translated from the Vulgate of M. Goose;
By A. Pope.
Behold the mansion reared by daedal Jack.
See the malt stored in many a plethoric sack.
In the proud cirque of Ivan’s bivouac.
Mark how the Rat’s felonious fangs invade
The golden stores in John’s pavilion laid.
Anon, with velvet foot & Tarquin strides,
Subtle Grimalkin to his quarry glides;
Grimalkin grim that slew the fierce rodent,
Whose tooth insidious Johann’s sack-cloth rent!
Lo now the deep-mouthed canine foes assault
That vexed avenger of the stolen malt.
Stored in the hallowed precincts of that hall
That rose complete at Jack’s creative call.
Here stalks the impetuous cow with crumpled horn.
Whereon the exacerbating hound was torn,
Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast that slew
The rat predaceous whose keen fangs ran through
The textile fibres that involved the grain
Which lay in Hans’ inviolate domain.
Here walks forlorn the Damsel crowned with rue,
Lactiferous spoils from vaccine dugs who drew
Of that corniculate beast whose tortuous horn
Tossed to the clouds in fierce vindictive scorn
The harrying hound whose braggart bark & stir
Arched the lithe spine and reared the indignant fur
Of puss, that with verminicidal claw
Struck the weird rat, in whose insatiate maw
Lay reeking malt that erst in Juan’s courts we saw.
Robed in senescent garb that seems in sooth
Too long a prey to Chronos’ iron tooth,
Behold the man, whose amorous lips incline
Full of young Eros’ osculative sign
To the lorn maiden whose lactalbic hands
Drew albu-lactic wealth from lactic glands
Of that immortal bovine, by whose horn
Distort, to realms ethereal was borne,
The beast cantelous, vexed of that sly
Ulysses quadrupedal who made die
The old mordacious rat who dared devout
Ante-cedaneous ale in John’s domestic bower.
Lo! Here with hirsute honors doffed, succinct
Of saponaceous locks, the priest who linked
In Hymen’s golden bands the torn unthrift
Whose means exiguous stared from many a rift
Even as he kissed the virgin all forlorn
Who milked the cow with implicated horn,
Who in fine wrath the canine torturer skied
That dared to vex the insidious muricide
Who let auroral effluence through the pelt
Of the sly rat that robbed the palace Jack had built.
The loud cantankerous shanghai comes at last.
Whose shouts aroused the shorn ecclesiast,
Who sealed the vows of Hymen’s sacrament
To him who robed in garments indigent
Exosculates the damsel lachrymose,
The emulgator of the horned brute morose,
That tossed the dog that worried the cat that kilt
The rat that ate the malt that lay in the house Jack built.”
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