These, then, were the actions undertaken by the Duke of Qin after his victories. Without any check to his desires, he began to oppress the people, and, at the advice of Li Su, destroying the works of the scholars. At this time a popular song began to circulate amongst the peasantry, which I here record.O such a bad Duke of Qin
I scarcely know where to begin
For he's a horrible, terrible
Wholly unbearable
Rascally mad Duke of Qin
His taxes are really quite fair--
At least if you get by on air
He drips jade and gold whilst we starve in the cold--
That miserly mad Duke of Qin
The scholars he takes from their books
And gives both their eyes to the rooks
He answers their learning with strangling and burning
That arrogant mad Duke of Qin
We pity the Confucianist
Whose name has appeared on his list
His pleas go unheard, so far down he's interred--
Such a rotten old mad Duke of Qin
With each of his neighbors he's made peace--
By killing them down to the least
Each federate state but a crumb on his plate,
Th'incontinent mad Duke of Qin
His justice is modelled on trust:
He trusts us to die when we must
"For virtue's the fruit of which torture's the root,"
So says the mad Duke of Qin
We'd love to move out of this state
But such simply is not our Fate
For he owns all the land from the sea to the sand
That cantankerous,
Rancorous,
No-hanky-pankorous
Disgustingly mad Duke of Qin!
Saturday, March 08, 2008
From the Annals of the Grand Historian:
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3 comments:
Sounds like a lost Gilbert and Sullivan libretto! I love it. Remember when we contemplated writing operatic hoaxes?
Still an excellent idea, I contend. Hoaxes are all the rage these days.
Also, I don't know that we could create a lost Gilbert and Sullivan libretto to equal this.
"The grand finale before the intermission was a rousing chorus celebrating the Joint Stock Company Act of 1862, as Utopia is incorporated into a limited-liability corporation."
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