’Ye shall not clear by Greekly speech, nor cozen from your path
The twinkling shoal, the leeward beach, and Hadria’s white-lipped wrath;
Nor tempt with painted cloth for wood my fraud-avenging hosts;
Nor make at all, or all make good, your bulwarks and your boasts.

’Now and henceforward serve unshod, through wet and wakeful shifts,
A present and oppressive God, but take, to aid, my gifts—­
The wide and windward-opening eye, the large and lavish hand,
The soul that cannot tell a lie—­except upon the land!’

In dromond and in catafract—­wet, wakeful, windward-eyed—­
He kept Poseidon’s Law intact (his ship and freight beside),
But, once discharged the dromond’s hold, the bireme beached once more,
Splendaciously mendacious rolled the Brass-bound Man ashore.

The thranite now and thalamite are pressures low and high,
And where three hundred blades bit white the twin-propellers ply: 
The God that hailed, the keel that sailed, are changed beyond recall,
But the robust and Brass-bound Man he is not changed at all!

From Punt returned, from Phormio’s Fleet, from Javan and Gadire,
He strongly occupies the seat about the tavern fire,
And, moist with much Falernian or smoked Massilian juice,
Revenges there the Brass-bound Man his long-enforced truce!

A TRUTHFUL SONG

The Bricklayer: 

I tell this tale, which is strictly true, Just by way of convincing you How very little, since things mere made, Things have altered in the building trade.

  A year ago, come the middle of March,
  We was building flats near the Marble Arch,
  When a thin young man with coal-black hair
  Came up to watch us working there.

  Now there wasn’t a trick in brick or stone
  That this young man hadn’t seen or known;
  Nor there wasn’t a tool from trowel to maul
  But this young man could use ’em all!

  Then up and spoke the plumbyers bold,
  Which was laying the pipes for the hot and cold: 
  ’Since you with us have made so free,
  Will you kindly say what your name might be?’

  The young man kindly answered them: 
  ’It might be Lot or Methusalem,
  Or it might be Moses (a man I hate),
  Whereas it is Pharaoh surnamed the Great.

  ’Your glazing is new and your plumbing’s strange,
  But otherwise I perceive no change,
  And in less than a month if you do as I bid
  I’d learn you to build me a Pyramid!’

The Sailor: 

I tell this tale, which is stricter true, Just by way of convincing you How very little, since things was made, Things have altered in the shipwright’s trade.

  In Blackwall Basin yesterday
  A China barque re-fitting lay,
  When a fat old man with snow-white hair
  Came up to watch us working there.