There's a tremulous quiver, The last death-shiver, And Red-Beard's course is run! Halloo! Halloo ! They have done for two! But a heavyish job remains to do! For yonder, sledge and shovel in hand, Like elder Sons of Giant Despair, A couple of Cyclops make a stand, And fiercely hammering here and there, Keep at bay the Powers of Air But desperation is all in vain !— They faint-they choke, For the sulphurous smoke Is poisoning heart, and lung, and brain, They reel, they sink, they gasp, they smother One for a moment survives his brother, Then rolls a corpse across the other! Hulloo! Hulloo ! And Hullabaloo ! G There is only one more thing to do And seized by beak, and talon, and claw, Bony hand, and hairy paw, Yea, crooked horn, and tusky jaw, The four huge Bodies are haul'd and shoven Each after each in the roaring oven! That Eisen Hutte is standing still, Go to the Hartz whenever you will, And there it is beside a hill, And a rapid stream that turns many a mill ; The self-same Forge,-you'll know it at sight Casting upward, day and night, Flames of red, and yellow, and white! Ay, half a mile from the mountain gorge, There it is, the famous Forge, With its Furnace, the same that blazed of yore, Hugely fed with fuel and ore; But ever since that tremendous Revel, Whatever Iron is melted therein, As Travellers know who have been to Berlin Is all as black as the Devil! "THE LAST MAN." 'Twas in the year two thousand and one, A pleasant morning of May, I sat on the gallows-tree all alone, A chanting a merry lay,— To think how the pest had spared my life, To sing with the larks that day! When up the heath came a jolly knave, Like a scarecrow, all in rags: It made me crow to see his old duds All abroad in the wind, like flags : So up he came to the timbers' foot And pitch'd down his greasy bags. Good Lord! how blythe the old beggar was! At pulling out his scraps, The very sight of his broken orts Made a work in his wrinkled chaps : "Come down," says he, "you Newgate-bird, And have a taste of my snaps!". Then down the rope, like a tar from the mast, I slided, and by him stood; But I wish'd myself on the gallows again A foul beef-bone and a mouldy crust;— Then after this grace he cast him down : A pace or two off, on the windward side, " For the felons' bones lay there But he only laugh'd at the empty skulls, And offer'd them part of his fare. |