I carefully cut the rind, and without once
Breaking the fine apartments of the fruit,
Or spilling thence a drop of golden juice,
Find that one room through which the steel has passed.
This I dissect, and, testing as I can,
Fail to discover aught that's poisonous.
VIII.
I bring my microscope, and on a seed
Clinging with abject fear, I see a Shape
Whose wings are reeking with foul slime, whose eyes
Glare with a demon lustre born of Pain.
Its face has somewhat of the human shape,
The under-jaw too large, and bearded long;
The forehead full of putrefying sores.
Such front the Genius, Danhasch, may have worn.
It may be that the hideous face is like
The idol Krishna's, from whose feasts depart,
Smitten with cholera, the Hindoo devotees.
The body oozes with a loathsome dew.
Its head is red as if sucked full of blood;
But all the rest, its hundred legs, and tail,
The mailed back, and the wide-webbed prickly wings,
Are green, like those base eyes of jealousy
Which hope to see a covert murder done.
