Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AN IRREGULAR SUPPLICATORY ADDRESS TO THE AMERICAN ACADEMIES, by ROYALL TYLER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AN IRREGULAR SUPPLICATORY ADDRESS TO THE AMERICAN ACADEMIES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Ye learned wights, who all the heights
Last Line: That arcanum -- perpetual motion.
Alternate Author Name(s): Old Simon; S.
Subject(s): Hypocrisy; Lectures; Perpetual Motion; Scholarship & Scholars; Science; Addresses; Speaking; Public Speaking; Scientists


OF ARTS ANDSCIENCES

YE learned wights, who all the heights
Of science still are soaring,
The comet's tail, or tail of mites
Sagaciously exploring.
Whose eyes, like classic bird, so round,
All nature vast can inspect,
Now gazing Andes lofty mound,
Now peering o'er an insect.
The maculae of Sol detect,
With geometric adage;
And, georgically wise, correct,
The fungus of a cabbage.
Ye philosophic gossips, who
Celestial scandals telling,
Tattle what night each starry beau
Will take his brilliant belle in.
When hen peck'd Jove with long retreat,
Flies from connubial function;
Or red coat Mars sits tete a tete,
With Venus in conjunction.
Ye curious wights, who simpering track
The tulips genial hours;
Lasciviously delight to act,
As pandars to the flowers.
The genial natal hour, nor yet
Your noblest powers arouse;
But, ghastly stems noting, sit
CLERKS IN DEATH'S COUNTING HOUSE.
Great journalists of drizzly drops,
Memorialists of air,
Historians of weather cocks,
Biographers of foul and fair.
Inveterate foes to grubs, worms, flies,
Nursing sires to weeds and swine,
O hear a suppliant's earnest cries,
Your laurels round his wig to twine.
Oh how I yearn with you to club,
At annual meetings, when so wise,
You trace the lineage of a grub,
Or tender loves of Hessian flies.
Say! with you, shall I mount the seat,
In fame's classic, georgic, charr'ot;
Be wet nurse to an infant beet,
Foster father to a carrot?
Deign sirs to hear why now I'd reap,
Agri-horti-cultural bays;
And what my bold pretence to seek,
To bob my name with A.A.S.
I have two carrots in my ground,
Each thicker than a fat man's leg;
A full grown Pumpkin, ripe and sound,
No bigger than a pullets egg.
A peck of torpid birds I've found,
Who've slept of centuries past four,
So meagre, mouldy, and unsound,
You'd swear they'd sleep four centuries more.
Of petrifactions I have got
An Indian pudding boil'd to stone;
The heart of a true Sans Culotte,
More petrified than barber's hone,
The left eye of a non descript,
Larger than the moon, when southfull,
Who'd sup a Kraken at a sip,
Of Morse's Mammouth make a mouthful.
A rotten tooth which holds a peck,
Which once crunch'd bones, or grass more pliant,
Or grac'd the jaws which erst did deck,
Great Magnalian Mather's giant.
I keep that famous corn cob point,
Which quickly can diseases heal,
And coax coy pain from limb or joint,
Like stroking sticks of brass and steel.
In latitude just forty five,
Down a dark cella[r] I did creep,
And, with my union rope, did strive
To measure pecks and bushels neat.
Of kennel water I did weigh
A pound -- and thus a standard found;
For, spight of dirt, dead cats, or hay,
This pound will always weigh a pound.
I've made a noble wriggling chair,
In which my science I retail;
And sit, like politician rare,
And move my snout, without my tail.
My darling calf now boasts in death,
Seven legs, two tails uneven,
Who, had he puff'd a single breath,
Had frisk'd the two, and kick'd the seven.
A new discovery I've wrote,
Magnetic Fluid's found in flip,
My feet its variations note,
My head the boozy needles dip.
A curious diagram I've got,
All peppered o'er with A's and B's;
A nostrum sure to cure the rot,
In mangy sheep -- in dogs the fleas.
Whole years I've watch'd our parish vane,
Boxing the compass, like a tar;
Whole years, with hot, cold, dry and rain,
Like Milton's Satan, I've waged war.
I keep an obit'ary pen,
Of men and old maids, through the town;
When death, THAT JACK KATCH, throttles them,
I mark each CLAY COLD OBIT down.
If new discoveries wont prevail,
Pudding, nor naturae lusus,
If torpid birds and carrots fail,
Your high dubbings to produce us;
My spouse, in my behalf, presents
A certain Linguinary notion,
Which you will own well represents,
That Arcanum -- perpetual motion.





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