The poem
We're away! and the wind whistles shrewd In our whiskers and teeth; And the granite-like grey of the road Seems to slide underneath. As an eagle might sweep through the sky, So we sweep through the land; And the pallid pedestrians fly When they hear us at hand. We outpace, we outlast, we outstrip! Not the fast-fleeing hare, Nor the racehorses under the whip, Nor the birds of the air Can compete with our swiftness sublime, Our ease and our grace. We annihilate chickens and time And policemen and space.
Do you mind that fat grocer who crossed? How he dropped down to pray In the road when he saw he was lost; How he melted away Underneath, and there rang through the fog His earsplitting squeal As he went -- Is that he or a dog, That stuff on the wheel?