Attributed to Col. Hudson, McClellan’s Staff

THE DOMICIL ERECTED BY JOHN

Translated from the Vulgate of M. Goose

BY A. POPE

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Behold the mansion reared by daedal Jack.

See the malt stored in many a plethoric sack,

In the proud cirque of Ivan’s bivouac.

Mark how the rat’s felonious fangs invade

The golden stores in John’s pavilion laid.

Anon with velvet foot and Tarquin strides,

Subtle Grimalkin to his quarry glides,

Grimalkin grim, that slew the fierce rodent,

Whose tooth insidious Johann’s sackcloth rent!

Lo! Now the deep-mouthed canine foe’s assault

That vexed the avenger of the stolen malt,

Stored in the hallowed precincts of that hall

That rose complete at Jack’s creative call.

Here stalks the impetuous Cow with crumpled horn,

Whereon the exacerbating hound was torn,

Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast that slew

The rat predaceous, whose keen fangs ran through

The textile fibres that involved the grain,

Which lay in Hans’ inviolate domain.

Here walks forlorn the damsel crowned with rue,

Lactiferous spoils from vaccine dugs who drew,

Of that corniculate beast whose tortured horn

Tossed to the clouds, in fierce vindictive scorn,

The harrying hound, whose braggart bark and stir

Arched the lithe spine and reared the indignant fur

Of puss, that with verminicidal claw

Struck the weird rat, in whose insatiate maw

Lay reeking malt, that erst in Juan’s court we saw

Robed in a senescent garb that seems in sooth

Too long a prey to Chronos’ iron tooth

Behold the man whose amorous lips incline,

Full with young Eros’ osculative sign,

To the ‘lorn maiden whose lact-albic hands

Drew albu-lactic wealth from lacteal glands

Of that immortal bovine, by whose horn

Distort, to realms ethereal was borne

The beast catulean; vexer of that sly

Ulysses quadrupedal, who made die

The old mordacious Rat that dared devour

Antecedaneous ale In John’s domestic bower.

Lo, here, with hirsute honors doffed, succinct

Of saponaceous locks, the Priest who linked

In Hymen’s golden bands the torn unthrift

Whose means exiguous stared from many a rift

Even as he kissed the virgin all forlorn

Who milked the cow with implicated horn

Who in fine wrath the canine torturer skied

That dared to vex the insidious muricide

Who let auroreal effluence through the pelt

Of the sly rat that robbed the place Jack had built

The loud cantankerous Shanghae comes at last

Whose shouts arose the shorn ecclesiast

Who sealed the vows of Hymen's sacrament,

To him who, robed in garments indigent

Exosculates the damsel lachrymose,

The emulgator of that horned brute morose

That tossed the dog, that worried the cat, that kilt

The rat that ate the malt that lay in the house Jack built.