The Quest -II- The Preparations

All had been ordered weeks before the start From the best firms at such work: instruments To take the measure of all queer events, And drugs to move the bowels or the heart. A watch, of course, to watch impatience fly, Lamps for the dark and shades against the sun; Foreboding, too, insisted on a gun, And coloured beads to soothe a savage eye. In theory they were sound on Expectation, Had there been situations to be in; Unluckily they were their situation: One should not give a poisoner medicine, A conjurer fine apparatus, nor A rifle to a melancholic bore.