Authors:
  • In Koln, a town of monks and bones,
    And pavement fang'd with murderous stones,
    And rags and hags, and hideous wenches,
    I counted two-and-seventy stenches,
    All well defined, and several stinks!
    Ye nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks,
    The River Rhine, it is well known,
    Doth wash your city of Cologne;
    But tell me, nymphs! what power divine
    Shall henceforth whash the river Rhine.

    1828 'Cologne', first published in Friendship's Offering (1834), as 'Lightheartedness in Rhyme', no.4.