rs, wrapt in woe profound.--
And am I like to this portray'd?
Exclaim'd the Sage's smiling Shade.
Good Sir, I never knew before
That I a Turkish turban wore,
Or mantle hemm'd with golden stitches,
Much less a pair of satin breeches;
But as for him in sable clad,
Though wond'rous kind, 'twas rather mad
To visit one like me forlorn,
So long before himself was born.
And what's the next? inquir'd a third;
A jolly blade upon my word!--
'Tis Alexander, Philip's son,
Lamenting o'er his battles won;
That now his mighty toils are o'er,
The world has nought to conquer more.
At which, forth stalking from the host,
Before them stood the Hero's Ghost--
Was that, said he, my earthly form,
The Genius of the battle-storm?
From top to toe the figure's Dutch!
Alas, my friend, had I been such,
Had I that fat and meaty skull,
Those bloated cheeks, and eyes so dull,
That driv'ling mouth, and bottle nose,
Those shambling legs, and gouty toes;
Thus form'd to snore throughout the day,--
And eat and drink the night away;
I ne'er had felt the fev'rish flame
That caus'd my bloody thirst for fame;
Nor madly claim'd immortal birth,
Because the vilest brute on Earth:
And, oh! I'd not been doom'd to hear,
Still whizzing in my blister'd ear,
The curses deep, in damning peals,
That rose from 'neath my chariot wheels,
When I along the embattled plain
With furious triumph crush'd the slain:
I should not thus be doom'd to see,
In every shape of agony,
The victims of my cruel wrath,
For ever dying, strew my path;
The grinding teeth, the lips awry,
The inflated nose, the starting eye,
The mangled bodies writhing round,
Like serpents, on the bloody ground;
I should not thus for ever seem
A charnel house, and scent the steam
Of black, fermenting, putrid gore,
Rank oozing through each burning pore;
Behold, as on a dungeon wall,
The worms upon my body crawl,
The which, if I would brush away,
Around my clammy fingers play,
And, twining fast with many a coil,
In loathsome sport my labor foil.

Enough! the frighted Painter cried,
And hung his head in fallen pride.

Not so the other. He, of stuff
More stubborn, ne'er would cry enough;
But like a soundly cudgell'd oak,
More sturdy grew at every stroke,
And thus again his ready tongue
With fluent logick would have rung:
My Lord, I'll prove, or I'm a liar--
Whom interrupting then with ire,
Thus check'd the Judge: Oh, proud yet mean!
And canst thou hope from me to screen
Thy foolis