[Untitled]

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.”