Punch (103.1892)

26

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[July 23, 1892.

"THERE HE BLOWS!"

(The German Emvcror has gone Whaling in the North Seas.)

" There he blows! There he goes! " Like a Titan in throes,
With his wallopping tail, and his wave-churning nose,

The spouting Cetacean Colossus!
Eh ? Harpoon that Monster ! The thought makes one pale,
With one thundering thwack of that thumping big tail,

To the skies in small splinters he 'd toss us !

Rolling in foaming wild billows, ice-laden

He goes, like the boisterous sea " (vide Hadtjt ! )

" Upheaved from the deep." swift, tremendous,
Leviathan sports on the far-foaming wave.
If he runs athwart us, what power shall save,

From the doom to which promptly he'd send us ?

His " soundings," or " diggings," are many and deep ;
But would that his " three-hundred fathoms " he'd keep,

Below in the ocean's cold quiet.
But no, not at all; he 's not that sort of whale!
He must breathe, he must blow, he must roar, till the gale

Is charged with the sound of his riot.

Leviathan loves the wild turmoil of strife,
And lashing the billows to him is true life ;

Behold how he buffets and scourges them l[
Chase him ? The Captain (though also a Kaiser),
Might think that his course to avoid him were wiser,

Until sheer necessity urges them.

And yet whales are beaten—by narwhals and men,
And other mere pigmies. 'Tis said, now and then,

E'en sword-fish can compass their ruin,
By stabbing together—in Cassius's way
With Ccesar. Leviathan, dead, is a prey

To dog-fish, and sea-birds, or Bruin.

There he blows ! There he goes ! Would an amateur Whaler,
Like WiLnKLM, that fine blend of Statesman and Sailor,

Incline to the chase and the capture
Of such a huge, wandering, wallopping whale.
To whom " Troubling the waters" with blow-holes and tail

Seems a source of such riotous rapture ?