Description of a Gun. Songs and Epigrams. Sir Thomas Wyatt. 1880. The Poetical Works

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–42). The Poetical Works. 1880.

Songs and Epigrams

Description of a Gun


VULCAN begat me, Minerva me taught,
Nature my mother, craft nourish’d me year by year;
Three bodies are my food, my strength is in nought,
Anger, wrath, waste, and noise are my children dear;
Guess, friend, what I am, and how I am wrought,	5
Monster of sea, or of land, or of elsewhere:
Know me, and use me, and I may thee defend,
And if I be thine enemy, I may thy life end.