what effect would it have on any of you, from civilised England, with you to enlighten it, to the furious fighting dragons who are tearing each other in the eastern seas? None! But if any of your quidnuncs really want to know what I _would_ say if I _did_ signal, tell them old Mars, grown wiser, has turned up War; has nailed his raven to a barn-door as a warning; has made a pet of Peace's soft-plumed dove; and strongly advises the belligerent boobies on earth who take his old name in vain, and play his abandoned game still, to--_go and do likewise_!!!
_Mr. Punch._ By the cestus of Venus, and so I will!!!
(_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!
