WORKS.
65
O'er the swarth Æthiop rolls his bright career,
And slowly gilds the Grecian hemisphere.
And now the horned and unhorned kind
Whose lair is in the wood, sore-famish'd grind
Their sounding jaws, and froz'n and quaking fly
Where oaks the mountain dells imbranch on high:
They seek to couch in thickets of the glen,
Or lurk deep-shelter'd in the rocky den.
Like aged men[1] who, prop'd on crutches, tread
Tottering with broken strength and stooping head,
And slowly gilds the Grecian hemisphere.
And now the horned and unhorned kind
Whose lair is in the wood, sore-famish'd grind
Their sounding jaws, and froz'n and quaking fly
Where oaks the mountain dells imbranch on high:
They seek to couch in thickets of the glen,
Or lurk deep-shelter'd in the rocky den.
Like aged men[1] who, prop'd on crutches, tread
Tottering with broken strength and stooping head,
- ↑ Like aged men.] In the original, τριποδι βροτᾶ, a three-footed mortal: that is, a man with a crutch: a metaphor suggested, probably, by the ænigma of the Sphinx.
"What is that, which is two-footed, three-footed, and four-footed, yet one and the same? Œdipus declared that the thing propounded to him was man: for that a man, while an infant, went on four: when grown up, on two; and when old, on three: as using a staff through feebleness." Diodorus, Bibl. 4.
shores of the Continent." Goldsmith, Animated Nature, vol. vi.
The Polypus is mentioned by Homer, Odys. v.:
As when the polypus enforced forsakes
His rough recess, in his contracted claws
He gripes the pebbles still to which he clung:
So he within his lacerated grasp
The crumbled stone retain'd, when from his hold
The huge wave forced him, and he sank again.
Cowper
His rough recess, in his contracted claws
He gripes the pebbles still to which he clung:
So he within his lacerated grasp
The crumbled stone retain'd, when from his hold
The huge wave forced him, and he sank again.
Cowper
