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 edged with death, and crowding rows on
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!
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.
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.
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 falchion flies.
Shut in himself, the war without he hears,
Safe in the tempest of their rattling spears;