In this uncertain matter

If I the wrong course take,
Mary to me will mercy show
For my Marana's sake.

If I am right, and Dian bend
Her dreadful bow, or Phoebus send
His shafts abroad for slaughter,
Safe from their arrows shall I be
And the twin Deities for me
Will spare my dear-loved daughter.

If every one in Antioch

Had reasoned in this strain,
It never would have raised alarm
In Satan's dark domain.

But Mary's Image every day

Looks down on crowds who come to pray;
Her votaries never falter:
While Dian's temple is so bare,

That unless her Priestess take good care,
She will have a grass-green altar.

Perceiving this, the old Dragon

Inflamed with anger grew;

Earthquakes and Plagues were common ills,
There needed something new;
Some vengeance so severe and strange
That forepast times in all their range
With no portent could match it:

So for himself a nest he made,
And in that nest an egg he laid,
And down he sate to hatch it.

He built it by the fountain
Of Phlegethon's red flood,

In the innermost abyss, the place
Of central solitude;

Of adamantine blocks unhewn,
With lava scoria interstrewn,

The sole material fitting;
With amianth he lined the nest,
And incombustible asbest,
To bear the fiery sitting.

There with malignant patience
He sate in fell despite,

Till this dracontine cockatrice

Should break its way to light. Meantime his angry heart to cheer, He thought that all this while no fear The Antiocheans stood in,

Of what on deadliest vengeance bent With imperturbable intent

He there for them was brooding.

The months of incubation

At length were duly past, And now the infernal Dragon-chick Hath burst its shell at last; At which long-look'd-for sight enrapt, For joy the father Dragon clapt His brazen wings like thunder, So loudly that the mighty sound Was like an earthquake felt around And all above and under.

The diabolic youngling

Came out no callow birth,
Puling, defenceless, blind and weak,
Like bird or beast of earth;
Or man, most helpless thing of all
That fly, or swim, or creep, or crawl;
But in his perfect figure;

His horns, his dreadful tail, his sting,
Scales, teeth, and claws and every thing
Complete and in their vigour.

The Old Dragon was delighted,
And proud withal to see

In what perfection he had hatch'd

His hellish progeny;

And round and round, with fold on fold, His tail about the imp he roll'd

In fond and close enlacement;

And neck round neck with many a turn He coil'd, which was, you may discern, Their manner of embracement.

THE YOUNG DRAGON.

PART II.

A VOICE was heard in Antioch,
Whence uttered none could know,
But from their sleep it wakened all,
Proclaiming woe, woe, woe!
It sounded here, it sounded there,
Within, without, and every where,
A terror, and a warning ;
Repeated thrice the dreadful word
By every living soul was heard
Before the hour of morning.

And in the air a rushing

Past over, in the night;

And as it past, there past with it
A meteoric light;

The blind that piercing light intense
Felt in their long seal'd visual sense,
With sudden short sensation :
The deaf that rushing in the sky
Could hear, and that portentous cry

The astonished Antiocheans

Impatiently await

The break of day, not knowing when
Or what might be their fate.
Alas! what then the people hear,
Only with certitude of fear

Their sinking hearts affrighted;

For in the fertile vale below,
Came news that, in that night of woe,
A Dragon had alighted.

It was no earthly monster

In Libyan deserts nurst;

Nor had the Lerna lake sent forth
This winged worm accurst;

The Old Dragon's own laid egg was this,
The fierce Young Dragon of the abyss,
Who from the fiery fountain,

Through earth's concavities that night Had made his way, and taken flight Out of a burning mountain.

A voice that went before him
The cry of woe preferred;
The motion of his brazen wings
Was what the deaf had heard ;
The flashing of his eyes, that light
The which upon their inward sight
The blind had felt astounded;
What wonder then, when from the wall
They saw him in the vale, if all

With terror were confounded.