PHILOSPHERS' SCALES.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 229, 9 December 1874, Page 2

PHILOSPHERS' SCALES.

What were they, you ask ? You shall presently see, These scales were not made to weigh sugar and tea; Oh, no! for such properties wondrous had they, That even ideas and thoughts they could weigh ; Together with articles small or immense, From, mountains and planets, to atoms of sense. The first thing I weigh’d , was the head of G Voltaire, Which retained all t ie wit that had ever been * there; Next thing I threw in the torn scraps of a . 3 . leaf Containing the prayer of a Mormon’s belief. Next thing I tried was Alexander the Great, .With a garment that Dorcas had made for a weight; And though clad in armour from sandals to .; crown, The hero rose up —hut the garment went down. By further experiments—no matter how, Ten chariots, I found, weighed less than one plough ; A sword with gilt trappings rose up in the scale, Though balanced by only a tenpenny nail. A lord and lady, went, up at full sail, When a bee chanced to light in the opposite scale; Ten Doctors, ten Lawyers, two Courtiers, one Earl, Ten Councillors’ wigs, full of powder and curl All heaped in one balance, and swinging from thence, Weighed less than some atoms of candour and sense. A fresh-water diamond, with brilliants begirt. Then one good potatoe just wash’d from the dirt, Yet not mountains of silver, nor gold, could suffice, One pearl to outweigh—t’was the “ pearl of great price.” At last the whole world, was bowl'd in at the grate, With the soul of a beggar to serve for a weight ; When the scale with the soul in’t, so mightily fell That it jerked the Philosopher out of his cell! Palmam qui Meruit Febat.