Classic Poem

The bold encroachers on the deep,
Gain by degrees huge tracts of land,
Till Neptune with one general sweep
Turns all again to barren strand.

The multitude's capricious pranks
Are said to represent the seas;
Breaking the bankers and the banks,
Resume their own whene'er they please.

Money, the life-blood of the nation,
Corrupts and stagnates in the veins,
Unless a proper circulation
Its motion and its heat maintains.

Because 'tis lordly not to pay,
Quakers and aldermen, in state,
Like peers have levees every day
Of duns attending at their gate.

We want our money on the nail;
The banker's ruined if he pays;
They seem to act an ancient tale,
The birds are met to strip the jays.

Riches, the wisest monarch sings,
Make pinions for themselves to fly:
They fly like bats, on parchment wings,
And geese their silver plumes supply.

No money left for squandering heirs!
Bills turn the lenders into debtors,
The wish of Nero now is theirs,
That they had never known their letters.

Conceive the works of midnight hags,
Tormenting fools behind their backs;
Thus bankers o'er their bills and bags
Sit squeezing images of wax.

Conceive the whole enchantment broke,
The witches left in open air,
With power no more than other folk,
Exposed with all their magic ware.

So powerful are a banker's bills
Where creditors demand their due;
They break up counter, doors, and tills,
And leave the empty chests in view.

Thus when an earthquake lets in light
Upon the god of gold and hell,
Unable to endure the sight,
He hides within his darkest cell.

As when a conjuror takes a lease
From Satan for a term of years,
The tenant's in a dismal case
Whene'er the bloody bond appears.

A baited banker thus desponds,
From his own hand foresees his fall,
They have his soul who have his bonds,
'Tis like the writing on the wall.

How will that caitiff wretch be scared
When first he finds himself awake
At the last trumpet, unprepared,
And all his grand account to make?

For in that universal call
Few bankers will to heaven be mounters:
They'll cry, 'ye shops upon us fall,
Conceal and cover us, ye counters.'

When other hands the scales shall hold,
And they in men and angels' sight
Produced with all their bills and gold,
Weighed in the balance, and found light.