Thus in a basin drop a shilling,
  Then fill the vessel to the brim,
You shall observe, as you are filling,
  The pond’rous metal seems to swim: 

It rises both in bulk and height,
  Behold it swelling like a sop;
The liquid medium cheats your sight: 
  Behold it mounted to the top!

In stock three hundred thousand pounds,
  I have in view a lord’s estate;
My manors all contiguous round! 
  A coach-and-six, and served in plate!

Thus the deluded bankrupt raves,
  Puts all upon a desperate bet;
Then plunges in the Southern waves,
  Dipt over head and ears—­in debt.

So, by a calenture misled,
  The mariner with rapture sees,
On the smooth ocean’s azure bed,
  Enamell’d fields and verdant trees: 

With eager haste he longs to rove
  In that fantastic scene, and thinks
It must be some enchanted grove;
  And in he leaps, and down he sinks.

Five hundred chariots just bespoke,
  Are sunk in these devouring waves,
The horses drown’d, the harness broke,
  And here the owners find their graves.

Like Pharaoh, by directors led,
  They with their spoils went safe before;
His chariots, tumbling out the dead,
  Lay shatter’d on the Red Sea shore.

Raised up on Hope’s aspiring plumes,
  The young adventurer o’er the deep
An eagle’s flight and state assumes,
  And scorns the middle way to keep.

On paper wings he takes his flight,
  With wax the father bound them fast;
The wax is melted by the height,
  And down the towering boy is cast.

A moralist might here explain
  The rashness of the Cretan youth;[1]
Describe his fall into the main,
  And from a fable form a truth.

His wings are his paternal rent,
  He melts the wax at every flame;
His credit sunk, his money spent,
  In Southern Seas he leaves his name.

Inform us, you that best can tell,
  Why in that dangerous gulf profound,
Where hundreds and where thousands fell,
  Fools chiefly float, the wise are drown’d?

So have I seen from Severn’s brink
  A flock of geese jump down together;
Swim where the bird of Jove would sink,
  And, swimming, never wet a feather.

But, I affirm, ’tis false in fact,
  Directors better knew their tools;
We see the nation’s credit crack’d,
  Each knave has made a thousand fools.

One fool may from another win,
  And then get off with money stored;
But, if a sharper once comes in,
  He throws it all, and sweeps the board.

As fishes on each other prey,
  The great ones swallowing up the small,
So fares it in the Southern Sea;
  The whale directors eat up all.

When stock is high, they come between,
  Making by second-hand their offers;
Then cunningly retire unseen,
  With each a million in his coffers.