THE VISION OF JUDGMENT.
525
For all corrupted things are buoyed like corks,[decimal 1]
By their own rottenness, light as an elf,
Or wisp that flits o'er a morass: he lurks,
It may be, still, like dull books on a shelf,
In his own den, to scrawl some "Life" or "Vision,"[lower-roman 1]
As Welborn says—"the Devil turned precisian."[decimal 2]
CVI.
Of this true dream, the telescope is gone[lower-roman 2]
Which kept my optics free from all delusion,
And showed me what I in my turn have shown;
All I saw farther, in the last confusion,
Was, that King George slipped into Heaven for one;
And when the tumult dwindled to a calm,
I left him practising the hundredth psalm.[decimal 3]
- ↑ A drowned body lies at the bottom till rotten; it then floats, as most people know. [Byron may, possibly, have heard of the "Floating Island" on Derwentwater."]
- ↑ "Verily, you brache!
The devil turned precisian."
Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts, act i. sc i. - ↑ ["Mem. This poem was begun on May 7, 1821, but left off the same day—resumed about the 20th of September of the same year, and concluded as dated."