The Great Crab in Lake Mohrin

In the town of Mohriu 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
With fetters down below,
Else would he work the country
A dreadful, dreadful woe!

The creature's miles in length, they say,
And often turns over, and woe's the day
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 colens.
All things must with him go.

Such going backwards that will be!
The meat you put in your mouth, d'ye sec?
Will not stay there, but straightway trot
Back to the plate, and then to the pot!
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.

The timber from the house 'll get free,
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,
And the cow again, in her turn,
Be what the calf is now!

Back to the flower will go the wax,
The shirt on the back will turn to flax,
The flax to linseed change, and then
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.

And after him the councilmen,
And all the talented writers, then;
And the corporation stripped shall be
Of its corporate capacity.
The rector on tlie school-bench
Will sit, a scholar small;
In short, the world grow back again
To children, one and all.

All shall go back to earth's green sod.
And each, with Adam, be a clod.
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
With his great tail will crack.

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.
Just think how this poor ditty
Would share the wretched fate,
Drawn through Fame's trumpet's mouthpiece
Back to the ink-horn straight!