As fishes on each other prey,
The great ones swallowing up the small,
So fares it in the Southern Sea;
The whale directors eat up all.
When stock is high, they come between,
Making by second-hand their offers;
Then cunningly retire unseen,
With each a million in his coffers.
So, when upon a moonshine night,
An ass was drinking at a stream,
A cloud arose, and stopt the light,
By intercepting every beam:
The day of judgment will be soon,
Cries out a sage among the crowd;
An ass has swallow'd up the moon!
The moon lay safe behind the cloud.
Each poor subscriber to the sea
Sinks down at once, and there he lies;
Directors fall as well as they,
Their fall is but a trick to rise.
So fishes, rising from the main,
Can soar with moisten'd wings on high;
The moisture dried, they sink again,
And dip their fins again to fly.
Undone at play, the female troops
Come here their losses to retrieve;
Ride o'er the waves in spacious hoops,
Like Lapland witches in a sieve.
Thus Venus to the sea descends,
As poets feign; but where's the moral?
It shows the Queen of Love intends
To search the deep for pearl and coral.
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