Classic Poem

PARTI .

Pithyran was a Pagan,
An easy-hearted man,
And Pagan sure he thought to end,
As Pagan he began;
Thought he, the one must needs be true,
The old Religion, or the new,
And therefore nothing care I;
I call Diana the Divine;
My daughter worships at the shrine
Of the Christian Goddess, Mary.

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 Phaebus 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 sat to hatch it.

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 sat to hatch it.

There, with malignant patience,
He sat 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 clapp'd
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 vigor.

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.