"In the course of events, he shall find to his cost "That he cannot regain what he foolishly lost; "Of the nations around he shall be the derision, "And know by experience the rule of Division." So Jupiter read--a god of first rank-- And still had read on--but he came to a blank: For the Fates had neglected the rest to reveal-- They either forgot it, or chose to conceal: When a leaf is torn out, or a blot on a page That pleases our fancy, we fly in a rage-- So, curious to know what the Fates would say next, No wonder if Jove, disappointed, was vext. But still as true genius not frequently fails, He glanced at the Virgin, and thought of the Scales; And said, "To determine the will of the Fates, "One scale shall weigh Britain, the other the States." Then turning to Vulcan, his maker of thunder, Said he, "My dear Vulcan, I pray you look yonder, "Those creatures are tearing each other to pieces, "And, instead of abating, the carnage increases. "Now, as you are a blacksmith, and lusty stout ham-eater, "You must make me a globe of a shorter diameter; "The world in abridgment, and just as it stands "With all its proportions of waters and lands; "But its various divisions must so be designed, "That I can unhinge it whene'er I've a mind-- "How else should I know what the portions will weigh, "Or which of the combatants carry the day?" Old Vulcan complied, (we've no reason to doubt it) So he put on his apron and strait went about it-- Made center, and circles as round as a pancake, And here the Pacific, and there the Atlantic. An axis he hammered, whose ends were the poles, (On which the whole body perpetually rolls) A brazen meridian he added to these, Where four times repeated were[143] ninety degrees. I am sure you had laughed to have seen his droll attitude, When he bent round the surface the circles of latitude, The zones and the tropics, meridians, equator, And other fine things that are drawn on salt water. Away to the southward (instructed by Pallas) He placed in the ocean the Terra Australis, New Holland, New Guinea, and so of the rest-- America lay by herself in the west: From the regions where winter eternally reigns, To the climes of Peru he extended her plains; Dark groves, and the zones did her bosom adorn, And the Crosiers,[A] new burnished, he hung at Cape Horn. [A] Stars, in the form of a cross, which mark the South Pole in Southern latitudes.--_Freneau's note._ The weight of two oceans she bore on her sides, With all their convulsions of tempests and tides; Vast lakes on her surface did fearfully roll, And the ice from her rivers surrounded the pole. Then Europe and Asia he northward extended, Where under the Arctic with Zembla they ended; (The length of these regions he took with his garters, Including Siberia, the land of the Tartars.)