I marked not from afar the site
Where lurked that most unhallowed wight,
Taught by the pangs, with which I groan,
Since then the wretch too well I’ve known,
By his base treach’ry tripp’d and thrown!
By his unwieldy form of snow
Roughly arrested in my track,
Onward, like arrow from a bow,
I sprung—then fell, and broke my back!
Detested form! that—like the trunk
Of aged tree—the bard o’erthrew;
How like thou art in form and hue
To an old miser—or a monk[1],
A miser, and his bags of gold!
Woe to the miscreant who rolled
Thy figure from the snow, to be
A fence for “Hunchback” against me;
A fence to Hunchback, caitiff rude,
A plague to all the neighbourhood!
Thou loaf-shaped heap—thou rustic fort,
To break my legs—ill mannered sport!
Meal-coloured castle—snow-white pump,
Reared (where none need thee) on the hill;
Thou frigid post—thou frosty stump,
Ah, thou hast wrought me grievous ill!
And wrung with thy untimely blows
Blood from my feet and from my nose!
- ↑ This is one of the poet’s sneers at the religious orders of his time. In another poem, addressed to the Owl, he compares that bird to ‘an old abbess.’
‘How like thou art in form and hue
To an old miser—or a monk.’
