Æolian monarch! Emperor of Puffs! We modern sailors dread not thy rebuffs; See to thy golden shore promiscuous come Quacks for the lame, the blind, the deaf, the dumb; Fools are their bankers--a prolific line, And every mortal malady's a mine. Each sly Sangrado, with his poisonous pill, Flies to the printer's devil with his bill, Whose Midas touch can gild his asses' ears, And load a knave with folly's rich arrears. And lo! a second miracle is thine, For sloe-juiced water stands transform'd to wine. Where Day and Martin's patent blacking roll'd, Burst from the vase Pactolian streams of gold; Laugh the sly wizards glorying in their stealth, Quit the black art, and loll in lazy wealth. See Britain's Algerines, the Lottery fry, Win annual tribute by the annual lie. Aided by thee--but whither do I stray? Court, city, borough, own thy sovereign sway: An age of puffs the age of gold succeeds, And windy bubbles are the spawn it breeds. If such thy power, O hear the Muse's prayer! Swell thy loud lungs, and wave thy wings of air; Spread, viewless giant, all thy arms of mist Like windmill sails to bring the poet grist; As erst thy roaring son with eddying gale Whirl'd Orithyia from her native vale-- So, while Lucretian wonders I rehearse, Augusta's sons shall patronize my verse. I sing of Atoms, whose creative brain, With eddying impulse, built new Drury Lane; Not to the labours of subservient man, To no young Wyatt appertains the plan; We mortals stalk, like horses in a mill, Impassive media of Atomic will; Ye stare! then truth's broad talisman discern-- 'Tis Demonstration speaks.--Attend and learn! From floating elements in chaos hurl'd, Self-form'd of atoms, sprang the infant world. No great First Cause inspired the happy plot, But all was matter, and no matter what. Atoms, attracted by some law occult, Settling in spheres, the globe was the result; Pure child of Chance, which still directs the ball, As rotatory atoms rise or fall. In ether launch'd, the peopled bubble floats, A mass of particles and confluent motes, So nicely pois'd, that if one atom flings Its weight away, aloft the planet springs, And wings its course thro' realms of boundless space, Outstripping comets in eccentric race. Add but one atom more, it sinks outright Down to the realms of Tartarus and night. What waters melt or scorching fires consume, In different forms their being reassume; Hence can no change arise, except in name, For weight and substance ever are the same.