Classic Poem

Again the gaunt mosquito comes,
Assassin of the night!
With all his starving family,
To put my dreams to flight,
And try and settle his small bill,
And take a draft at sight.

I hear again the dreadful sound,
That tells me who is near;
I hear him wind his horrid horn,
And whet his poisoned spear;
He sounds the battle blast, and ah!
I feel that he is here.

In vain the rank cigar I smoke,
Quite wild and desperate grown,
In vain I try to drive him out,
And shut the window down,
For still I hear those tranquil pipes,
Monotonously drone!

In vain with patent canopies
My restless couch I spread,
No sooner do I close my eyes,
And settle well in bed,
I feel a sort of faintness, like
A patient being bled.

Like Cook among the Cannibals,
'Tis useless to appeal,
Or like a mummy wind myself
In sheets from head to heel;
The hungry wretch has picked me out,
To make himself a meal.

His sucker, like a burglar's drill,
Would pierce an iron door:
He loves, as Alexander did,
To wade in human gore,
And like the Hoosac Tunnel, he's
An everlasting bore!

You only put your finger down,
To find he isn't there,
For now he's nibbling at your nose,
Or dancing in the air,
Or doing something in your ear,
Before you are aware.

A child is he of Jersey swamps,
Where 'mid the fens and fosses,
He cultivates his dapper wings
And nurtures his proboscis,
And promenades on slender stills,
Among the humid mosses.

But yet his faults may not suffice
All merit to efface,
For sinner never yet was born,
Without some spark of grace:
And he is a philanthropist—
He loves the human race.

I've rubbed the room with camphor gum,
To modify the air;
But still I hear his hateful hum,
About me everywhere,
And were I not a methodist,
I'd undertake to swear.

Oh! bear me to some frozen clime
Where polar tempests blow!
On train-oil I could gaze unmoved,
Or Greenland's cliffs of snow,
And be content to pass my days,
Among the Esquimaux!