Colony! fain to display thy games on length of thy town-bridge!
There, too, ready to dance, though fearing the shaking of crazy
Logs of the Bridgelet propt on pier-piles newly renewèd,
Lest supine all sink deep-merged in the marish's hollow,
So may the bridge hold good when builded after thy pleasure 5
Where Salisúbulus' rites with solemn function are sacred,
As thou (Colony!) grant me boon of mightiest laughter.
Certain a townsman mine I'd lief see thrown from thy gangway
Hurlèd head over heels precipitous whelmed in the quagmire,
Where the lake and the boglands are most rotten and stinking, 10
Deepest and lividest lie, the swallow of hollow voracious.
Witless surely the wight whose sense is less than of boy-babe
Two-year-old and a-sleep on trembling forearm of father.
He though wedded to girl in greenest bloom of her youth-tide,
(Bride-wife daintier bred than ever was delicate kidlet, 15
Worthier diligent watch than grape-bunch blackest and ripest)
Suffers her sport as she please nor rates her even at hair's worth,
Nowise 'stirring himself, but lying log-like as alder
Felled and o'er floating the fosse of safe Ligurian woodsman,
Feeling withal, as though such spouse he never had own'd; 20
So this marvel o' mine sees naught, and nothing can hear he,
What he himself, an he be or not be, wholly unknowing.
Now would I willingly pitch such wight head first fro' thy bridge,
Better a-sudden t'arouse that numskull's stolid old senses,
Or in the sluggish mud his soul supine to deposit 25
Even as she-mule casts iron shoe where quagmire is stiffest.
O Colonia, that longest to disport thyself on a long bridge and art
prepared for the dance, but that fearest the trembling legs of the
bridgelet builded on re-used shavings, lest supine it may lie stretched in
the hollow swamp; may a good bridge take its place designed to thy fancy,
on which e'en the Salian dances may be sustained: for the which grant to
me, Colonia, greatest of gifts glee-exciting. Such an one, townsman of
mine, I want from thy bridge to be pitched in the sludge head over heels,
right where the lake of all its stinking slime is dankest and most
superfluent--a deep-sunk abyss. The man is a gaping gaby! lacking the sense
of a two-years-old baby dozing on its father's cradling arm. Although to
him is wedded a girl flushed with springtide's bloom (and a girl more
dainty than a tender kid, meet to be watched with keener diligence than the
lush-black grape-bunch), he leaves her to sport at her list, cares not a
single hair, nor bestirs himself with marital office, but lies as an alder
felled by Ligurian hatchet in a ditch, as sentient of everything as though
no woman were at his side. Such is my booby! he sees not, he hears naught.
Who himself is, or whether he be or be not, he also knows not. Now I wish
to chuck him head first from thy bridge, so as to suddenly rouse (if
possible) this droning dullard and to leave behind in the sticky slush his
sluggish spirit, as a mule casts its iron shoe in the tenacious slough.