Now shrieks, and dying groans, the desert fill;
They rage, they rend; their rav'nous jaws distil
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 repress'd 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 bound,
All over proof and shut against a wound.
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 armèd 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 fired with drought,
He trusts to turn its current down his throat;
In lessen'd waves it creeps along the plain :
He sinks a river,1 and he thirsts again.
Go to the Nile,2 and, from its fruitful side,
'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 palmtree, with this inscription, Nemo antea religavit.
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?
Through 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 :1 Who then
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 darest thou with the world's great Father vie,
Thou, who dost tremble at my creature's eye?
At full my huge leviathan shall rise,
Boast all his strength, and spread his wondrous size.
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; 2 his spacious jaws unfold,
And, marshall'd round the wide expanse, disclose
Teeth edged with death, and crowding rows on rows:
What hideous fangs on either side arise!
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.
1 This alludes to a custom of this creature, which is, when sated with fish, to come ashore and sleep among the reeds. The crocodile's mouth is exceeding wide. Pliny, sit totum os.
When he gapes, says
Martial says to his old woman,
Cum comparata rictibus tuis ora
Niliacus habet crocodilus angusta.
So that the expression there is barely just.
His bulk is charged with such a furious soul,
That clouds of smoke from his spread nostrils roll,
As from a furnace; and, when roused his ire,
Fate issues from his jaws in streams of fire.1
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 awaked, 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 eyes
Lift their broad lids, the morning seems to rise.
This too is nearer truth than at first view may be imagined. crocodile, say the naturalists, lying long under water, and being there forced to hold its breath, when it emerges, the breath long repressed 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 and admirers of the writings of Moses, whom I suppose the author of this poem.
I have observed already that three or four of the creatures here described are Egyptian; the two last are notoriously so, they are the riverhorse and the crocodile, those celebrated inhabitants of the Nile; and on these two it is that our author chiefly dwells. It would have been expected from an author more remote from that river than Moses, in a catalogue of creatures produced to magnify their Creator, to have dwelt on the two largest works of his hand, viz. the elephant and the whale. This is so natural an expectation, that some commentators have rendered behemoth and leviathan, the elephant and whale, though the descriptions in our author will not admit of it; but Moses being, as we may well suppose, under an immediate terror of the hippopotamus and crocodile, from their daily mischiefs and ravages around him, it is very accountable why he should permit them to take place. 2 C
In vain may death in various shapes invade,
The swift-wing'd arrow, the descending blade;
His naked breast their impotence defies;
The dart rebounds, the brittle fauchion flies.
Shut in himself, the war without he hears,
Safe in the tempest of their rattling spears;
The cumber'd strand their wasted volleys strow;
His sport, the rage and labour of the foe.
His pastimes like a cauldron boil the flood,
And blacken ocean with the rising mud;
The billows feel him, as he works his way;
His hoary footsteps shine along the sea;
The foam high-wrought, with white divides the green,
And distant sailors point where death has been.
His like earth bears not on her spacious face:
Alone in nature stands his dauntless race,
For utter ignorance of fear renown'd,
In wrath he rolls his baleful eye around :
Makes every swoln, disdainful heart, subside,
And holds dominion o'er the sons of pride.
Then the Chaldæan eased his lab'ring breast,
With full conviction of his crime oppress'd.
"Thou canst accomplish all things, Lord of might: And every thought is naked to thy sight. But, oh! thy ways are wonderful, and lie Beyond the deepest reach of mortal eye. Oft have I heard of thine Almighty power; But never saw thee till this dreadful hour. O'erwhelm'd with shame, the Lord of life I see, Abhor myself, and give my soul to thee. Nor shall my weakness tempt thine anger more: Man is not made to question, but adore."
ON MICHAEL ANGELO'S FAMOUS PIECE OF
WHO IS SAID TO HAVE CAUSED A MALEFACTOR TO BE STABBED THAT
HE MIGHT DRAW THE CRUCIFIXION MORE NATURALLY.1
WHILST his Redeemer on his canvas dies,
Stabb'd at his feet his brother weltering lies:
The daring artist, cruelly serene,
Views the pale cheek and the distorted mien;
He drains off life by drops, and, deaf to cries,
Examines every spirit as it flies :
He studies torment, dives in mortal woe,
To rouse up every pang repeats his blow;
Each rising agony, each dreadful grace,
Yet warm transplanting to his Saviour's face.
Oh glorious theft! oh nobly wicked draught!
With its full charge of death each feature fraught,
Such wondrous force the magic colours boast,
From his own skill he starts in horror lost.
ON THE TRAGEDY OF CATO.
WHAT do we see? Is Cato then become
A greater name in Britain than in Rome?
Does mankind now admire his virtues more,
Though Lucan, Horace, Virgil, wrote before?
How will posterity this truth explain?
"Cato begins to live in Anna's reign."
The world's great chiefs, in council or in arms,
Rise in your lines with more exalted charms;
Illustrious deeds in distant nations wrought,
And virtues by departed heroes taught,
Raise in your soul a pure immortal flame,
Adorn your life, and consecrate your fame;
To your renown all ages you subdue,
And Cæsar fought, and Cato bled for you.
There is no und for the story.
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