Description of a Gun

VULCAN begat me, Minerva me taught,

Nature my mother, craft nourish’d me year by year;

Three bodies are my food, my strength is in nought,

Anger, wrath, waste, and noise are my children dear;

Guess, friend, what I am, and how I am wrought,

Monster of sea, or of land, or of elsewhere:

Know me, and use me, and I may thee defend,

And if I be thine enemy, I may thy life end.