By NATHANIEL WILLIAM WRAXHALL, ESQ. M.P.

I.
MURRAIN seize the House of Commons!
Hoarse catarrh their windpipes shake!
Who, deaf to travell’d Learning’s summons,
Rudely cough’d whene’er I spake!
North, nor Fox’s thund’ring course,
Nor e’en the Speaker, tyrant, shall have force
To save thy walls from nightly breaches,
From Wraxhall’s votes, from Wraxhall’s speeches,
Geography, terraqueous maid,
Descend from globes to statesmen’s aid!
Again to heedless crouds unfold
Truths unheard, tho’ not untold:
Come, and once more unlock this vasty world—
Nations attend! the map of Earth’s unfurl’d!

II.
Begin the song, from where the Rhine,
The Elbe, the Danube, Weser rolls——
Joseph, nine circles, forty seas are thine——
Thine, twenty millions souls——
Upon a marish flat and dank
States, Six and One,
Dam the dykes, the seas embank,
Maugre the Don!
A gridiron’s form the proud Escurial rears,
While South of Vincent’s Cape anchovies glide:
But, ah! o’er Tagus, once auriferous tide,
A priest-rid Queen, Braganza’s sceptre bears——
Hard fate! that Lisbon’s Diet-drink is known
To cure each crazy constitution but her own!

III.
I burn! I burn! I glow! I glow!
With antique and with modern lore!
I rush from Bosphorus to Po—
To Nilus from the Nore.
Why were thy Pyramids, O Egypt! rais’d,
But to be measur’d, and be prais’d?
Avaunt, ye Crocodiles! your threats are vain!
On Norway’s seas, my soul, unshaken,
Brav’d the Sea-Snake and the Craken!
And shall I heed the River’s scaly train?
Afric, I scorn thy Alligator band!
Quadrant in hand
I take my stand,
And eye thy moss-clad needle, Cleopatra grand!
O, that great Pompey’s pillar were my own!
Eighty-eight feet the shaft, and all one stone!
But hail, ye lost Athenians!
Hail also, ye Armenians!
Hail once, ye Greeks, ye Romans, Carthagenians!
Twice hail, ye Turks, and thrice, ye Abyssinians!
Hail too, O Lapland, with thy squirrels airy!
Hail, Commerce-catching Tipperary!
Hail, wonder-working Magi!
Hail, Ouran-Outangs! Hail, Anthropophagi!
Hail, all ye cabinets of every state,
From poor Marino’s Hill, to Catherine’s Empire great!
All have their chiefs, who-speak, who write, who seem to think,
Caermarthens, Sydneys, Rutlands, paper, pens, and ink;

IV.
Thus, through all climes, to earth’s remotest goal,
From burning Indus to the freezing Pole,
In chaises and on floats,
In dillies, and in boats;
Now on a camel’s native stool;
Now on an ass, now on a mule.
Nabobs and Rajahs have I seen;
Old Bramins mild, young Arabs keen:
Tall Polygars,
Dwarf Zemindars,
Mahommed’s tomb, Killarney’s lake, the fane of Ammon,
With all thy Kings and Queens, ingenious Mrs. Salmon[1]:
Yet vain the majesties of wax!
Vain the cut velvet on their backs——
GEORGE, mighty GEORGE, is flesh and blood——
No head he wants of wax or wood!
His heart is good!
(As a King’s should)
And every thing he says is understood!

[1] Exhibits the Wax-work, in Fleet-Street.