To paw the vale he proudly takes delight,
And triumphs in the fulness of his might;
High rais'd he snuffs the battle from afar,
And burns to plunge amid the raging war
And mocks at death, and throws his foam around,
And in a storm of fury shakes the ground.
How does his firm, his rising heart, advance
Full on the brandish'd sword, and shaken lance;
While his fix'd eyeballs meet the dazzling shield,
Gaze, and return the lightning of the field!
He sinks the sense of pain in gen'rous pride,
Nor feels the shaft that trembles in his side;
But neighs to the shrill trumpet's dreadful blast
Till death; and when he groans, he groans his last.
But, fiercer still, the lordly lion stalks,
Grimly majestic in his lonely walks;
When round he glares, all living creatures fly;
He clears the desart with his rolling eye.
Say, mortal, does he rouse at thy command,
And roar to thee, and live upon thy hand?
Dost thou for him in forests bend thy bow,
And to his gloomy den the morsel throw,
Where bent on death lie hid his tawny brood,
And, couch'd in dreadful ambush, pant for blood;
Or, stretch'd on broken limbs, consume the day,
In darkness wrapt, and slumber o'er their prey?
By the pale moon they take their destin'd round,
And lash their sides, and furious tear the ground.
Pursuing their prey by beasts, particularly the lion.
night is true of most wild Ps. cvi. 20. The Arabians
have one among their five hundred names for the lion,
which signifies "the hunter by moonshine."
Now shrieks, and dying groans, the desart fill;
They rage, they rend; their rav'nous jaws distill
With crimson foam; and, when the banquet's o'er,
They stride away, and paint their steps with gore;
In flight alone the shepherd puts his trust,
And shudders at the talon in the dust.
Mild is my behemoth, though large his frame;
Smooth is his temper, and represt his flame,
While unprovok'd. This native of the flood
Lifts his broad foot, and puts ashore for food;
Earth sinks beneath him, as he moves along
To seek the herbs, and mingle with the throng.
See with what strength his harden'd loins are
All over proof and shut against a wound. [bound,
How like a mountain cedar moves his tail!
Nor can his complicated sinews fail.
Built high and wide, his solid bones surpass
The bars of steel; his ribs are ribs of brass ;
His port majestic, and his armed jaw,
Give the wide forest, and the mountain, law.
The mountains feed him; there the beasts admire
The mighty stranger, and in dread retire:
At length his greatness nearer they survey,
Graze in his shadow, and his eye obey.
The fens and marshes are his cool retreat,
His noontide shelter from the burning heat;
Their sedgy bosoms his wide couch are made,
And groves of willows give him all their shade.
His eye drinks Jordan up, when fir'd with
drought,
He trusts to turn its current down his throat;
In lessen'd waves it creeps along the plain:
1 He sinks a river, and he thirsts again.
2 Go to the Nile, and, from its fruitful side, Cast forth thy line into the swelling tide: With slender hair leviathan command,
And stretch his vastness on the loaded strand.
Will he become thy servant? Will he own
Thy lordly nod, and tremble at thy frown?
Or with his sport amuse thy leisure day,
And, bound in silk, with thy soft maidens play?
Shall pompous banquets swell with such a prize?
And the bowl journey round his ample size?
Or the debating merchants share the prey,
And various limbs to various marts convey?
Thro' his firm skull what steel its way can win?
What forceful engine can subdue his skin?
Fly far, and live; tempt not his matchless might:
The bravest shrink to cowards in his sight;
The rashest dare not rouse him up: Who then
1 Cephissi glaciale caput, quo suetus anhelam
Ferre sitim Python, amnemque avertere ponto.
STAT. Theb. vii. 349.
Qui spiris tegeret montes, hauriret hiatu
Flumina, &c.
Let not then this hyperbole seem too much for an eastern poet, though some commentators of name strain hard in this place for a new construction, through fear of it.
2 The taking the crocodile is most difficult. Diodorus says, they are not to be taken but by iron nets. When Augustus conquered Egypt, he struck a medal, the impress of which was a crocodile chained to a palm-tree, with this inscription, Nemo antea religavit.
3 This alludes to a custom of this creature, which is, when sated with fish, to come ashore and sleep among the reeds.
Shall turn on me, among the sons of men?
Am I a debtor? Hast thou ever heard
Whence come the gifts that are on me conferr'd?
My lavish fruit a thousand valleys fills,
And mine the herds, that graze a thousand hills :
Earth, sea, and air, all nature is my own;
And stars and sun are dust beneath my throne.
And dar'st thou with the world's great Father vie,
Thou, who dost tremble at my creature's eye?
At full my huge leviathan shall rise, [size.
Boast all his strength, and spread his wondrous
Who, great in arms, e'er stripp'd his shining mail,
Or crown'd his triumph with a single scale?
Whose heart sustains him to draw near? 'Behold,
Destruction yawns; his spacious jaws unfold,
And, marshall'd round the wide expanse, disclose
Teeth edg'd with death, and crowding rows on
What hideous fangs on either side arise! [rows:
And what a deep abyss between them lies!
Mete with thy lance, and with thy plummet sound,
The one how long, the other how profound.
His bulk is charg'd with such a furious soul, That clouds of smoke from his spread nostrils roll, As from a furnace; and, when rous'd his ire, "Fate issues from his jaws in streams of fire.
The crocodile's mouth is exceeding wide. When he gapes, says Pliny, sit totum os. Martial says to his old
Cum comparata rictibus tuis ora
Niliacus habet crocodilus angusta.
So that the expression there is barely just.
2 This too is nearer truth than at first view may be
The rage of tempests, and the roar of seas,
Thy terror, this thy great superior please;
Strength on his ample shoulder sits in state;
His well-join'd limbs are dreadfully complete;
His flakes of solid flesh are slow to part;
As steel his nerves, as adamant his heart.
When, late awak'd, he rears him from the floods, And, stretching forth his stature to the clouds, Writhes in the sun aloft his scaly height, And strikes the distant hills with transient light, Far round are fatal damps of terror spread, The mighty fear, nor blush to own their dread. 'Large is his front; and, when his burnish'd
Lift their broad lids, the morning seems to rise.
magined. The crocodile, say the naturalists, lying long under water, and being there forced to hold its breath. when it emerges, the breath long represt is hot, and bursts out so violently, that it resembles fire and smoke. The horse suppresses not his breath by any means so long, neither is he so fierce and animated; yet the most correct of poets ventures to use the same metaphor concerning him:
Collectumque premens volvit sub naribus ignem.
By this and the foregoing note I would caution against a false opinion of the eastern boldness, from passages in them ill understood.
"His eyes are like the eyelids of the morning." I think this gives us as great an image of the thing it would express, as can enter the thought of man. It is not improbable that the Egyptians stole their hieroglyphic for the morning, which is the crocodile's eye, from this passage, though no commentator, I have seen, mentions it. It is easy to conceive how the Egyptians should be both readers
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