Long poetic eulogy from The Gentlemens magazine February 1740


On The Death of The Famous Flyer on The Rope at Shrewsbury

Magnis tamen excidit ausis

Fond Icarus of old, with rash essay,
In air attempted a forbidden way:
Too thin the medium for so cumb’rous freight,
Too weak the plumage to support the weight.
Yet less he dar’d who soar’d on waxen wing,
Than he who mounts to aether on a string.
Just as Arachne when buzzing prey
Entangle, flutter, and would wing away,
From watchful ambuscade insidious springs,
And to slender twine, ascending, clings.
So on his rope th’advent’rer climbs on high,
Bounds o’er cathedral heights, and seeks the sky:
Fix but his cable, and he’ll tell you soon,
What sort of natives cultivate the moon.
An army of such wights to cross the main,
Sooner than Haddock’s fleet, shou’d humble Spain
As warring pigmies thun’ring fall,
And without scaling ladders, mount the wall,
The proudest spire in Slop’s lofty town
Safety he gains, and glides as safely down:
Then soars again aloft, and downward springs,
Swift as an eagle, without aid of wings;
Shews anticks, hangs suspended by his toe;
Undazzled, views th’inverted chasm below.
Invites with beat of drum brave volunteers,
Defies Jack Spaniard, nor invasion fears,
Land when they will, they ne’er con’d hurt his ears.
Methink I see as yet his flowing hair
And body, darting like a falling star;
Swifter than what ‘with fins or feathers fly
Thro’ the aerial or the wat’ry sky
Once more he dares to brave the pathless way
Fate now pursuing, like a bird of prey;
And comet –like , he makes his latest tour,
In an excentric(oh!! Ill omen’d hour!)
Bar’d in his shirt to please the grazing crowd,
He little dreamt, poor soul! Of winding shroud!
Nothing could ought avail but limbs of brass,
When ground was iron, and The Severn glass.
As quick as lightning down his line he skims,
Securing in equal poise of agile limbs.
But see the trusted cordage faithless prove!
Headlong he falls, and leaves his soul above:
The gazing town was shock’d at the rebound
Of shatter’d bones, that rattled on the groun;
The broken cord rolls in various turns’
Smokes in the whirl and as it runs it burns.
‘so when the wriggling snake is snatch’d on high
in the eagles claws, and hisses in the sky,
Around the foe his twirling tail he flings,
And twists her legs, and writhes about her wings.
Cadman laid low, ye rash, behold and fear,
Unhappy man! Thy end lamented be;
Nought but thy own ill-fate so swift as thee.
Were metamorphoses, permitted now,
And tuneful Ovid liv’d to tell us how;
His apter Muse shou’d turn to thee to a daw,
Nigh to the fatal steeple still to kaw;
Perch on the cock, and nestle on the ball,
In hope no more confined, and never fall.

Initialled     J. A