[Illustration]
[Illustration: HORN-BOOK OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.]
_THE SONG OF THE PRINTER._
Pick and click
Goes the type in the stick,
As the printer stands at his case;
His eyes glance quick, and his fingers pick
The type at a rapid pace;
And one by one as the letters go,
Words are piled up steady and slow—
Steady and slow,
But still they grow,
And words of fire they soon will glow;
Wonderful words, that without a sound
Traverse the earth to its utmost bound;
Words that shall make
The tyrant quake,
And the fetters of the oppress’d shall break;
Words that can crumble an army’s might,
Or treble its strength in a righteous fight.
Yet the types they look but leaden and dumb,
As he puts them in place with finger and thumb
But the printer smiles,
And his work beguiles
By chanting a song as the letters he piles,
With pick and click,
Like the world’s chronometer, tick! tick! tick!
O, where is the man with such simple tools
Can govern the world as I?
With a printing press, an iron stick,
And a little leaden die.
With paper of white, and ink of black,
I support the Right, and the Wrong attack.
Say, where is he, or who may he be,
That can rival the printer’s power?
To no monarchs that live the wall doth he give:
Their sway lasts only an hour;
While the printer still grows, and God only knows
When his might shall cease to tower!