ODE TO IXION.
(By a Sympathetic, but Superficial Observer.)
Oh! the hardest of hearts some compassion must feel
For that modern Ixion, the Man on the Wheel!
See him scouring the roads on his spindly-spoked spider,
Dust-hid till you scarce tell the "bike" from its rider;
His abdomen shrunken, his shoulders up-humped,
With the gaping parched lips of one awfully pumped.
Could a camel condemned to the treadmill look worse?
Sure those lips, could he close them, would shape to a curse
On his horrible doom! As I gaze and stand by,
With a pang at my heart, and a tear in my eye,
I think of Ixion, the Wandering Jew,
That Cork-leggèd Dutchman—the Flying One, too,
And other poor victims of pitiless speed;
And I own, while their cases were frightful indeed,
The Bicyclist's fate is the worser by far.
Poor soul!!! The small "pub," and a "pull" at the "bar,"
Appear your best comfort. Imagine the cheer
Of a slave of the "bike" whose sole solace is beer!
You can't see the prospect; your eyes are cast down
Like Bunyan's Muck-raker; your brows in a frown
Of purposeless effort are woefully knit;
Of Nature's best charms you perceive not a bit.
The hedge your horizon, the long, dusty road
Is your sole point of sight. Wretched victim, what goad
Of Fate, or sheer folly, thus urges you on?
Old torments—like poor Io's gadfly—are gone,
And yet, like Orestes, the Fury-whipped, you
Wheel on, as some comet wheels on through the blue
In billion-leagued cycles less dreary than is
The cycle on which round the wide world you whiz!
Eh? Cutting a record? You like it? The goose!!!
A task without pleasure, a toil without use!
Poor soul! You are worse than Ixion, I feel,
For he was not tied by himself to the wheel!
