th disemboguing streams
Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames,
The king of dykes! than whom, no sluice of mud
With deeper sable blots the silver flood.
'Here strip, my children! here at once leap in,
Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin,
And who the most in love of dirt excel,
Or dark dexterity of groping well:
Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around
The stream, be his the Weekly Journals bound;
A pig of lead to him who dives the best;
A peck of coals a-piece shall glad the rest.'
"In naked majesty Oldmixon stands,
And, Milo-like, surveys his arms and hands;
Then sighing thus, 'And am I now threescore?
Ah, why, ye Gods! should two and two make four?'
He said, and climb'd a stranded lighter's height,
Shot to the black abyss, and plung'd downright:
The senior's judgment all the crowd admire,
Who but to sink the deeper rose the higher.
"Next Smedley div'd; slow circles dimpled o'er
The quaking mud, that clos'd and op'd no more.
All look, all sigh, and call on Smedley lost;
Smedley in vain resounds through all the coast.
"Then ** essay'd; scarce vanish'd out of sight,
He buoys up instant, and returns to light;
He bears no tokens of the sabler streams,
And mounts far off among the swans of Thames.
"True to the bottom, see Concanen creep,
A cold, long-winded, native of the deep;
If perseverance gain the diver's prize,
Not everlasting Blackmore this denies:
No noise, no stir, no motion canst thou make,
Th' unconscious stream sleeps o'er thee like a lake.
"Next plung'd a feeble, but a desperate pack,
With each a sickly brother at his back:
Sons of a day! just buoyant on the flood,
Then number'd with the puppies in the mud.
Ask ye their names? I could as soon disclose
The names of these blind puppies as of those.
Fast by, like Niobe, (her children gone,)
Sits Mother Osborne, stupify'd to stone!
And monumental brass this record bears,
'These _are_, ah no! these _were_ the Gazetteers!'
"Not so bold Arnall; with a weight of scull
Furious he drives, precipitately dull.
Whirlpools and storms in circling arm invest,
With all the might of gravitation blest.
No crab more active in the dirty dance,
Downward to climb, and backward to advance,
He brings up half the bottom on his head,
And loudly claims the Journal and the Lead.
"The plunging Prelate, and his pond'rous Grace,