Stuffed Owls

Today's vote for the most uneuphonious opening line in any poem published during the Romantic period goes to: Eyles Irwin's Nilus, an Elegy: Occasioned by the Victory of Admiral Nelson over the French Fleet (1798), which commences thuswise:

It's partly the unwanted homophone on 'court': I caught the Memphic Muse rather suggests some horrible water-borne tropical disease, perhaps involving pestiferous-torrent blood. There's also this description of Nelson's naval strategy as something that entailed 'bursting', like a water-balloon or perhaps a pimple, over the enemy:

And this David Attenboroughish moment of local colour:

And:

Quite a big if, in that last line, surely. Though Pestiferous Torrents are no doubt disagreeable things to have in one's veins.