RAILWAY LINES.
O semblance of a snail grown paralytic,
Concerning whom your victims daily speak
In florid language, fearsome and mephitic,
Enough to redden any trooper's cheek:
Let them, I say, hold forth till all is blue;
I take the longer view.
Not mine it is to curse you for your tedium
And frequent stops in search of wayside rest,
Nor call you, through the morning papers' medium,
A crying scandal and a public pest;
I designate you, on the other hand,
A bulwark of the land.
For should the Huns, in final desperation,
On our South-Eastern shore dash madly down,
'Tis true they might entrain at Dover station,
But when, ah, when would they arrive in town?
Or would they perish, hungry, lost, and spent,
Somewhere in wildest Kent?