-mail's warty iron cuirasses a crocodile.
Reels that castle thunder-smitten, storm-dismantled? From without
Scrambling up by crack and crevice, every cockney prates about
Towers--the heap he kicks now! turrets--just the measure of his cane!
Will that do? Observe moreover--(same similitude again)--
Such a castle seldom crumbles by sheer stress of cannonade:
'Tis when foes are foiled and fighting's finished that vile rains
invade,
Grass o'ergrows, o'ergrows till night-birds congregating find no holes
Fit to build in like the topmost sockets made for banner-poles.
So Clive crumbled slow in London--crashed at last.

A week before,
Dining with him,--after trying churchyard-chat of days of yore,--
Both of us stopped, tired as tombstones, head-piece, foot-piece,
when they lean
Each to other, drowsed in fog-smoke, o'er a coffined Past between.
As I saw his head sink heavy, guessed the soul's extinguishment
By the glazing eyeball, noticed how the furtive fingers went
Where a drug-box skulked behind the honest liquor,--"One more throw
Try for Clive!" thought I: "Let's venture some good rattling
question!" So--
"Come, Clive, tell us"--out I blurted--"what to tell in turn,
years hence,
When my boy--suppose I have one--asks me on what evidence
I maintain my friend of Plassy proved a warrior every whit
Worth your Alexanders, Caesars, Marlboroughs and--what said Pitt?--
Frederick the Fierce himself! Clive told me once"--I want to say--
"Which feat out of all those famous doings bore the bell away
--In his own calm estimation, mark you, not the mob's rough guess--
Which stood foremost as evincing what Clive called courageousness!
Come! what moment of the minute, what speck-center in the wide
Circle of the action saw your mortal fairly deified?
(Let alone that filthy sleep-stuff, swallow bold this wholesome Port!)
If a friend has leave to question,--when were you most brave, in
short?"

Up he arched his brows o' the instant--formidably Clive again.
"When was I most brave? I'd answer, were the instance half as plain
As another instance that's a brain-lodged crystal--curse it!--here
Freezing when my memory touches--ugh!--the time I felt most fear.
Ugh! I cannot say for certain if I showed fear--anyhow,