116
Two water rockets cannonading
Bear off two wigs that spurt and frizzle
Screwed fast upon the palisading
That fronts the house, some inches higher
Than the long flickering tongues of fire.
And faster now those watery rockets
Go spluttering all among the masses,
Now sousing heads, now emptying pockets,
Till all begin to bray like asses
And then stampede diramifying
As rays through clouds when suns are dying.
This simile, I hold’s, Miltonic,
And greatly dignifies the matter,
Being both appropriate and euphonic,
Clouds are but firemen, suns to spatter,
And ’tis a rule to shun the bathos
By likening limpets to Mount Athos.
Howe’er this be, the crowd stampeded
With better halves at home to shelter,
Such and what household words succeeded
This unheroic helter-skelter
For fustians spoiled:—’twere as irrelevant
To introduce here as an elephant.
Now fizzles out the last faint sparkle
From the drenched logs and firewood humid
And glimmering twilight ’gins to darkle
And lampless streets, in mire and gloom hid,
The fire is spent: the saints are dozing
Indoors, below the day is closing.
Far down the mist-dank roadway dwindle
Hose, firemen, engine, Fuchs and flagon,
And lurid clouds to westward kindle,
