Classic Poem

Might we not hope, with humble confidence,
That finally a benignant Providence
Will extricate the British nation
From her embarrassed situation,
And graciously dispense
An earthquake or a pestilence.
An earthquake would be far the best,
To set the question once for all, at rest;
Sinking the sister isle
At least a statute mile,
With a low, subsiding motion,
Beneath the level of the German Ocean,
There to suffer a sea change,
Into something queer and strange:
Then if their " bones are coral made "
They may supply the British trade
With an important new commodity:
Besides, when each Papistic churl
Shall have his eye-balls turn'd to pearl,
When " those are pearls which were his eyes. "
When each invaluable ball
Is fish'd to light by British enterprize
And British capital,
To what a premium will the shares rise.