THE SMELLS.
(Edgar Allan Poe "Up to Date.")
I.
Look on London with its Smells—
Sickening Smells!
What long nasal misery their nastiness foretells!
How they trickle, trickle, trickle,
On the air by day and night!
While our thoraxes they tickle.
Like the fumes from brass in pickle,
Or from naphtha all alight;
Making stench, stench, stench,
In a worse than witch-broth drench,
Of the muck-malodoration that so nauseously wells
From the Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells,
Smells, Smells, Smells—
From the fuming and the spuming of the Smells.
II.
Sniff the fetid sewer Smells—
Loathsome Smells!
What a lot of typhoid their intensity foretells!
Through the pleasant air of night,
How they spread, a noxious blight!
Full of bad bacterian motes,
Quickening soon.
What a lethal vapour floats
To the foul Smell-fiend who glistens as he gloats
On the boon.
Oh, from subterranean cells
What a gush of sewer-gas voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
In our houses! How it tells
Of the folly that impels
To the breeding and the speeding
Of the Smells, Smells, Smells,
Of the Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells,
Smells, Smells, Smells—
To the festering and the pestering of the Smells!
III.
See the Spectre of the Smells—
London Smells!
What a world of retrospect his tyranny compels!
In the silence of the night
How we muse on the old plight
Of Kensington,—a Dismal Swamp, and lone!
Still the old Swamp-Demon floats
O'er the City, as our throats
Have long known.
And the people—ah, the people—
Though as high as a church steeple
They have gone
For fresh air, that Demon's tolling
In a muffled monotone
Their doom, and rolling, rolling
O'er the City overgrown.
He is neither man nor woman,
He is neither brute nor human,
He's a Ghoul;
Spectre King of Smells, he tolls,
And he rolls, rolls, rolls.
Rolls,
With his cohort of Bad Smells!
And his cruel bosom swells
With the triumph of the Smells.
Whose long tale the scribbler tells
To the Times, Times, Times,
Telling of "local" crimes
In the gendering of the Smells,
Of the Smells:
To the Times, Times, Times,
Telling of Railway crimes,
In the fostering of Smells,—
Of the Smells, Smells, Smells,
Brick-field Smells, bone-boiling Smells,
Whilst the Demon of old times
With us dwells, dwells, dwells.
The old Swamp Fiend of moist climes!
See him rolling with his Smells—
Awful Smells. Smells. Smells—
See him prowling with his Smells,
Horrid Smells, Smells, Smells—
London Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells,
Smells, Smells, Smells,—
Will the County Council free us from these Smells?
JUST NOW THE CHIEF NILE-IST IN PARIS.—CLEOPATRA.
