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Amongst his staff, behold! the monarch ride,
Strapped in a case of leather sleek and yielding,
His field perspective dangling at his side:
Once from the stalls alone the foot’s light course
It spied, but now surveys both foot and horse.
Like some death-bearing cloud through dell and cover
The host rolls on: around in terror hover
Flocks of macaws, and fly with fitful wailing
Before the rattling drum and shrill fife sailing.
In stately pomp march forth the royal forces,
But rather slow: to quick march, run or double,
Not yet avail the simian foot’s resources,
And every step they take’s a world of trouble:
Dense brushwood clogs the van: a quagmire swallows
A whole battalion, uniforms grow rarer
Minced on the thorns, the recreant helmet follows
The tendrils’ noose twitched high above its wearer
Tree stumps trip many up, the overweighted
Dragoons’ unlucky steeds are quite checkmated,
And without fail capsize at every root,
So that the horse remains behind the foot.
Not Flora only, all the woodland Fauna,
Seems also up in arms at every corner:
A cloud of winged ants with every dole ’tis
That first invests them—like a mustard poultice:
Foul leeches here festoon their shuddering trotters,
Before a hissing snake the vanguard totters,
And here all thrill with dread, a form divining
More awful yet, yon bamboos’ ambush lining.
When half its daily course the sun completed,
Within that wood’s yet unexplored dominions
They pitched their camp all footsore, tired, and heated,
