Not weighing so much as his head and his legs, And having no hand in A pure understandin' Of the just equilibrium of casks and of kegs, Not bred up in attics, Nor taught mathematics, To work out the problems of Euclid with pegs ! He has plunged with the impetus wild of a lover, And the tub has loomed large, balanced, paused, and turned over! The Tiger at first had a hobby-horse ride, But now he is decently quartered inside, And the question is next, long as fortune may frown on him, How the two Bengalese are to keep the tub down on him! 'Bout this there's no blunder, The Tiger is under The Tub! My verse need not run To the length of a sonnet, To tell how the Bengalese Both jump upon it, While the beautiful barrel Keeps acting as bonnet To the Tiger inside, Who no more in his pride Can roam over jungle and plain, But sheltered alike from the sun and the rain, Around its interior his sides deigns to rub With a fearful hub-bub, He longs for his freedom again! The two Bengalese, Not at all at their ease, Hear him roar, And deplore Their prospects as sore, Forgetting both pic-nic and flask: Each wondering dumb What of both will become, Helps the other to press on the cask; Resign'd to their fate, But increasing their weight, By action of muscle and sinew, In order that forcibly you, Mr. Tub, Whom their Niggers this morning Roll'd here with their grub, May still keep the Tiger within you. On the top of the Tub, In the warmest of shirts, The thin man stands, While the fat by his skirts Holds-anxiously puffing and blowing; And the thin peers over the top of the cask, "Is there any hope for us," As much as to ask, With a countenance cunning and knowing; And just as he mournfully 'gins to bewail, In a grief-song that ought to be sung whole, He twigs the long end of the old Tiger's tail As it twists itself out of the bung-hole! Then sharp on the watch, He gives it a catch, And shouts to the Tiger, "You've now got your match; |