Shamed that the dragon's tail swept down the

star.
Not that the conscience-shackle tied so hard.
But had he been the prophet, as the bard,
Prognostick'd the diminutive slender birth
His seven-hill'd mountain-labour has brought forth,
His foreseen precipice ; that thought alone
Had stopt his fall, secured him all our own ;.
Free from his hypochondriac dreams he had slept.
And still his unsold Esau's birthright kept.
'Tis thus we see him lost, thus mourn his fall ;
That single teint alone has sullied all.
So have I in the Muses garden seen
The spreading rose, or blooming jessamine ;
Once from whose bosom the whole Hybla tram
The industrious treasurers of the rich plain,



236 APPENDIX. A.
Those winged foragers for their fragrant prey,
On loaded thighs bore thousand sweets away :
Now shaded by a sullen venomed guest
Cankered and sooted o'er to a spider's nest.
His sweets thus soured, what melancholy change,
What an ill-natur'd lour, a face so strange !
His life one whole long scene of all unrest,
And airy hopes his thin cameleon-feast ;
Pleased only with the pride of being preferred,
The echoed voice to his own listning herd,
A magisterial Belweather tape,
The lordly leader of his bleating troop.
These doctrines our young SuUenists preach
round,
The texts which their poetic silence found.
But why the doctor of their chair, why thou,
Their great rabbinic voice, thus silent too ?
Could Noll's once meteor glories blaze so fair,
To make thee that all-prostrate zealot there ?
Strange, that that fiery nose could boast that charm
Thy muse with those seraphic raptures warm !
And our fair Albion star to shine so bleak,
Her radiant influence so chill, so weak !
Gorged with his riotous festival of fame.
