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Translated by C. T. Brooks
IN the town of Mohrin they never sleep, | |
| But day and night in the lake they peep: | |
| May no good Christian child live to see | |
| The day when once the great crab gets free! | |
| He ’s fastened in the lake there | 5 |
| With fetters down below, | |
| Else would he work the country | |
| A dreadful, dreadful woe! | |
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| The creature ’s miles in length, they say, | |
| And often turns over, and woe ’s the day | 10 |
| When he once gets loose: he ’s on the land,— | |
| No power can ever his march withstand: | |
| And, as advancing backward, | |
| The way with crabs, you know, | |
| Why backward, nolens volens, | 15 |
| All things must with him go. | |
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| Such going backwards that will be! | |
| The meat you put in your mouth, d’ ye see? | |
| Will not stay there, but straightway trot | |
| Back to the plate, and then to the pot! | 20 |
| The bread will turn to wheat again, | |
| The meal will turn to corn, | |
| And everything will be just what | |
| It was before ’t was born. | |
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| The timber from the house ’ll get free, | 25 |
| And back to the woods, a rustling tree; | |
| The tree will creep back to a shoot, as of yore, | |
| The mortar turn to lime once more, | |
| The ox will be a calf again, | |
| The calf go back to the cow, | 30 |
| And the cow again, in her turn, | |
| Be what the calf is now! | |
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| Back to the flower will go the wax, | |
| The shirt on the back will turn to flax, | |
| The flax to linseed change, and then | 35 |
| Into the ground creep back again. | |
| And first the Burgomaster | |
| Will suffer change, they say; | |
| The people all shall see him | |
| A sucking child that day. | 40 |
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| And after him the councilmen, | |
| And all the talented writers, then; | |
| And the corporation stripped shall be | |
| Of its corporate capacity. | |
| The rector on the school-bench | 45 |
| Will sit, a scholar small; | |
| In short, the world grow back again | |
| To children, one and all. | |
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| All shall go back to earth’s green sod, | |
| And each, with Adam, be a clod. | 50 |
| The winged tribes will keep longest about, | |
| But they, too, will at last give out. | |
| The hen will be a chicken, | |
| And into the egg creep back, | |
| Which the great crab instanter | 55 |
| With his great tail will crack. | |
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| Heaven grant we never so far may get! | |
| The world is living and thriving yet: | |
| Good care is taken by the powers that be | |
| That the old great crab shall never be free. | 60 |
| Just think how this poor ditty | |
| Would share the wretched fate, | |
| Drawn through Fame’s trumpet’s mouthpiece | |
| Back to the ink-horn straight! | |
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