The Fire Fiend has schemes, it is credibly said,

For laying half London in ashes;

But Water—and Shaw—are the things he must dread,

And at sight of an engine he shakes his red head,

And his teeth like a lunatic gnashes.

But his fire-gnomes he multiplies lately so fast

That the task of repressing them’s trying;

The flare that they make and the heat that they cast,

Are so great that the Fiend seems resolved in one blast

To set the Metropolis frying.