Hawkman
10-10-2010, 11:12 AM
In London town did Bazalgette
A stately edifice decree:
Where Fleet, the tainted river, ran
Through sewers terrible to man,
Down to a septic sea.
So many miles of fertile ground
Dug up and plumbed and tunnelled round:
And there were parties for the press within the cuts,
although embankments under stress might fail,
And fall, entombing navvies, who with stubborn guts,
Continued to heroically prevail.
But Oh! That deep unsightly chasm which slanted
Down the muddy hill along the Thames embankment!
A stinking place, unholy, disenchanted,
As there beneath Westminster’s towers haunted
By politician wailing for depleted purse!
And from this chasm with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty tunnel monument was formed:
Amid whose swift and noisome shaft
The sewage of a city’s population flowed,
With stately grace along the subterranean road:
And ‘mid the brick and Portland pointing,
Unpleasant things the walls anointing.
A thousand miles meandering with the lazy motions
Beneath the city and through the countryside they ran,
To a monstrous pump-house builded there by man,
And forced in tumult to a tidal ocean:
And from his office Joseph heard the song,
At last the awful London stink is gone.
The shadow of the sewage works
Floated far out on the waves;
Where the mingled rubbish lurks
Pumped from the man-made caves.
They were a miracle of rare device
A sunless tunneldrome with caves not nice!
A hot-chick with a flying V
On the telly once I saw
The image of a biker maid
And on her instrument she played,
She sang like Tina Turner.
Could I recall to mind
Those riffs and all her song
Some deep delight I’d find
In that music loud and long.
But I’d not build a sewer there
Not in the sun and open air,
No tunneldrome! No caves not nice!
And none who heard would see them there,
And none would cry, Beware! Beware!
The awful smell, the poisoned air!
Those are well fed rats, not mice,
So close your eyes, protect your head,
With honey-dew they are not fed,
Nor drink the milk of paradise.
A stately edifice decree:
Where Fleet, the tainted river, ran
Through sewers terrible to man,
Down to a septic sea.
So many miles of fertile ground
Dug up and plumbed and tunnelled round:
And there were parties for the press within the cuts,
although embankments under stress might fail,
And fall, entombing navvies, who with stubborn guts,
Continued to heroically prevail.
But Oh! That deep unsightly chasm which slanted
Down the muddy hill along the Thames embankment!
A stinking place, unholy, disenchanted,
As there beneath Westminster’s towers haunted
By politician wailing for depleted purse!
And from this chasm with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty tunnel monument was formed:
Amid whose swift and noisome shaft
The sewage of a city’s population flowed,
With stately grace along the subterranean road:
And ‘mid the brick and Portland pointing,
Unpleasant things the walls anointing.
A thousand miles meandering with the lazy motions
Beneath the city and through the countryside they ran,
To a monstrous pump-house builded there by man,
And forced in tumult to a tidal ocean:
And from his office Joseph heard the song,
At last the awful London stink is gone.
The shadow of the sewage works
Floated far out on the waves;
Where the mingled rubbish lurks
Pumped from the man-made caves.
They were a miracle of rare device
A sunless tunneldrome with caves not nice!
A hot-chick with a flying V
On the telly once I saw
The image of a biker maid
And on her instrument she played,
She sang like Tina Turner.
Could I recall to mind
Those riffs and all her song
Some deep delight I’d find
In that music loud and long.
But I’d not build a sewer there
Not in the sun and open air,
No tunneldrome! No caves not nice!
And none who heard would see them there,
And none would cry, Beware! Beware!
The awful smell, the poisoned air!
Those are well fed rats, not mice,
So close your eyes, protect your head,
With honey-dew they are not fed,
Nor drink the milk of paradise.