L'Invitation au Voyage
Welcome aboard the Nautilus, monsieur! 1 vow you shall confess yourself amazed Ten thousand times before our cruise is done. What spectacles are mustered in the deep! Beauty mere words are useless to depict, Marvels unknown to Science—dangers too. Which we expunge with electricity. Salute your comrades now: Ned Land, Conseil, Brave fellows, and Professor Aronnax, The eminent pelagiologist,
Whose fund of knowledge is at your desire, As is my library, well-stocked and calm, Matchless for the conducting of research. Should you set store by music, you will find That organ a trustworthy instrument, While, for comestibles, we pride ourselves On our sea-urchin loaf and shark ragout.
Till dinner, then . .
--Thanks, Captain Nemo, for the compliment, But after a few weeks of Ned on whales And whaling, good Conseil just being good, And Aronnax as Aronnax, I might Start to hang round that matchless library, Thrum at the organ, savour the thick film Choking my tongue; and if, one afternoon. A mermaid swam from the dead coral groves And looked in, sea-eyed, at the fat window, Her _ olive hair writhing about her head, Her turquoise nipples pried at by small fish, Someone like me would say: 'Remarkable! _tted, my friends, a rare phenomenon! ,D.01thtless, the lungs have been replaced by gills, he hide, withstanding eighty atmospheres, Lavish toughened—the Creator's hand Lavish as always with new wonderment!' The long-boat, please .
KINGSLEY AMIS
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