The desks, the books, the benches, began to quake and totter;
And they heard a sound like thunder, a horrid, dreary sound,
As though all the powers of evil danced the polka underground.
The lawyers through their spectacles looked with a stony glare,
And the crier stammered out, “O Yes,” and whispered through a prayer:
Some of the judges fainted, and there for dead they lay;
And the jury snatched their solidi, and fleetly ran away.
And now—O, sight of wonder!—with a stifling smell of sulph-
Er, in the Middle Forum, there gaped a hideous gulf:
A gulf as black as midnight, or “best Japan,” I trow;