Wet with fishy harvesting,
And the cormorants resort,
Flapping slowly from their sport
With the fat Atlantic shoal,
Homeward to Tregeagle's Hole--
Walking there, the other day,
In a bight within a bay,
I espied amid the rocks,
Bruis'd and jamm'd, the daintiest box,
That the waves had flung and left
High upon an ivied cleft.
Striped it was with white and red,
Satin-lined and carpeted,
Hung with bells, and shaped withal
Like the queer, fantastical
Chinese temples you'll have seen
Pictured upon white Nankin,
Where, assembled in effective
Head-dresses and odd perspective,
Tiny dames and mandarins
Expiate their egg-shell sins
By reclining on their drumsticks,
Waving fans and burning gum-sticks.
Land of poppy and pekoe!
Could thy sacred artists know--
Could they distantly conjecture
How we use their architecture,
Ousting the indignant Joss
For a pampered Flirt or Floss,
Poodle, Blenheim, Skye, Maltese,