Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/379

Had Hedgecock's quadrant then been known,
  I might a lamp-post's height have shown
  By gas-tronomic skill,--if none
      Find fault with the metonymy.

  O hours of innocence! O ways
  How far from these unhappy days
      When all is vicy-versy!
  No flower more peaceful took its due
  Than I, who then no difference knew
  'Twixt Ursy Major and my true
      Old crony, Major Hersey.

  Now in long broils and feuds we roast,
  Like Strasburg geese that living toast
      To make a liver-paté,--
  And all because we fondly strove
  To set the city of our love
  In scientific fame above
      Her sister Cincinnati!

  We built our tower and furnished it
  With everything folks said was fit,
      From coping-stone to grounsel;
  And then, to give a knowing air,
  Just nominally assigned its care
  To that unmanageable affair,
      A Scientific Council.

  We built it, not that one or two
  Astronomers the stars might view
      And count the comets' hair-roots,
  But that it might by all be said
  How very freely we had bled,--
  We were not laying out a bed
      To force their early square-roots.

  The observations we wished made
  Were on the spirit we'd displayed,
      Worthy of Athens' high days;
  But they've put in a man who thinks
  Only of planets' nodes and winks,
  So full of astronomic kinks
      He eats star-fish on Fridays.

  The instruments we did not mean
  For seeing through, but to be seen
      At tap of Trustee's knuckle;
  But the Director locks the gate,
  And makes ourselves and strangers wait
  While he is ciphering on a slate
      The rust of Saturn's buckle.