Explore "The Hydrant-Headed Monster" by Oliver Herford on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Being an epistle to Paul. From Temperance
It comes! The monster rearing high, / Against the lurid western sky, / Its horrid, hissing Hydrant Heads, / While o'er the shuddering land it sheds / A dreary pall of waste and woe / And chilling streams of H_{2}O.
Now saints defend us, one and all, / And most especially Saint Paul, / Thou patron saint of Honest Fighting / And Common Sense and Letterwriting, / Who one time, for his "stomach's sake," / Bade Timothy the wine cup take; / Stay now this Water Fiend's advance / And save thy servant Temperance, / Ere Abstinence, that glum wet-nurse / Of Dire Dyspepsia, Chills, and worse, / Blow out the Lights of Love and Mirth, / And so asphyxiate the Earth.