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| BEHOLD the mansion reared by dædal Jack. | |
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| See the malt, stored in many a plethoric sack, | |
| In the proud cirque of Ivan’s bivouac. | |
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| Mark how the rat’s felonious fangs invade | |
| The golden stores in John’s pavilion laid. | 5 |
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| Anon, with velvet foot and Tarquin strides, | |
| Subtle grimalkin to his quarry glides,— | |
| Grimalkin grim, that slew the fierce rodent | |
| Whose tooth insidious Johann’s sackcloth rent. | |
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| Lo! now the deep-mouthed canine foe’s assault, | 10 |
| That vexed the avenger of the stolen malt; | |
| Stored in the hallowed precincts of the hall | |
| That rose complete at Jack’s creative call. | |
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| Here stalks the impetuous cow, with the crumpled horn, | |
| Whereon the exacerbating hound was torn, | 15 |
| Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast, that slew | |
| The rat predaceous, whose keen fangs ran through | |
| The textile fibres that involved the grain | |
| That lay in Hans’ inviolate domain. | |
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| Here walks forlorn the damsel crowned with rue, | 20 |
| Lactiferous spoils from vaccine dugs who drew, | |
| Of that corniculate beast whose tortuous horn | |
| Tossed to the clouds, in fierce vindictive scorn, | |
| The harrowing hound, whose braggart bark and stir | |
| Arched the lithe spine and reared the indignant fur | 25 |
| Of puss, that with verminicidal claw | |
| Struck the weird rat, in whose insatiate maw | |
| Lay reeking malt, that erst in Ivan’s courts we saw. | |
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| Robed in senescent garb, that seemed, in sooth, | |
| Too long a prey to Chronos’ iron tooth, | 30 |
| Behold the man whose amorous lips incline, | |
| Full with young Eros’ osculative sign, | |
| To the lorn maiden, whose lac-albic hands | |
| Drew albu-lactic wealth from lacteal glands | |
| Of the immortal bovine, by whose horn, | 35 |
| Distort, to realm ethereal was borne | |
| The beast catulean, vexer of that sly | |
| Ulysses quadrupedal who made die | |
| The old mordacious rat, that dared devour | |
| Antecedaneous ale in John’s domestic bower. | 40 |
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| 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, | 45 |
| Who milked the cow with the 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. | 50 |
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| 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, | 55 |
| The emulgator of that hornèd brute morose | |
| That tossed the dog that worried the cat that kilt | |
| The rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. | |
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