With slender hair Leviathan command,
And stretch his vastness on the loaded strand.
Will he become thy servant? Will he own
Thy lordly nod, and tremble at thy frown?
Or with his sport amuse thy leisure day,
And, bound in silk, with thy soft maidens play?
Shall pompous banquets swell with such a prize?
And the bowl journey round his ample size?
Or the debating merchant share the prey,
And various limbs to various marts convey?
Through his firm skull what steel its way can win?
What forceful engine can subdue his skin?

Fly far, and live; tempt not his matchless might;
The bravest shrink to cowards in his sight;
The rashest dare not rouse him up: who then
Shall turn on me, among the sons of men?
Am I a debtor? Hast thou ever heard
Whence come the gifts which are on me conferr'd?
My lavish fruit a thousand valleys fills,

And mine the herds that graze a thousand hills:
Earth, sea, and air, all nature is my own;
And stars and sun are dust beneath my throne.
And darest thou with the world's great Father vie,
Thou who dost tremble at my creature's eye?

At full my large Leviathan shall rise,

Boast all his strength, and spread his wondrous size. Who, great in arms, e'er stripp'd his shining mail, Or crown'd his triumph with a single scale? Whose heart sustains him to draw near? Behold, Destruction yawns; his spacious jaws unfold,

taking the crocodile is most difficult. are not to be taken but by iron nets. quered Egypt, he struck a medal, the

Diodorus says, they When Augustus conimpress of which was

a crocodile chained to a palm-tree, with this inscription:

'Nemo antea religavit.'

'The rashest dare not rouse him up,' etc.] This alludes to a custom of this creature, which is, when sated with fish, to come ashore, and sleep among the reeds.

- Behold,

Destruction yawns; his spacious jaws unfold,' etc.] The

And, marshal'd round the wide expanse, disclose
Teeth edged with death, and crowding rows on rows:
What hideous fangs on either side arise!

And what a deep abyss between them lies!
Mete with thy lance, and with thy plummet sound,
The one how long, the other how profound!

His bulk is charged with such a furious soul,
That clouds of smoke from his spread nostrils roll,
As from a furnace; and when roused his ire,
Fate issues from his jaws in streams of fire.
The rage of tempests, and the roar of seas,
Thy terror, this thy great superior please;
Strength on his ample shoulder sits in state;
His well-join'd limbs are dreadfully complete;
His flakes of solid flesh are slow to part;
As steel his nerves, as adamant his heart,

When, late-awaked, he rears him from the floods, And, stretching forth his stature to the clouds, Writhes in the sun aloft his scaly height, And strikes the distant hills with transient light, Far round are fatal damps of terror spread, The mighty fear, nor blush to own their dread.

crocodile's mouth is exceeding wide. When he gapes, says Pliny, Fit totom os.' Martial says to his old woman,

'Cum comparata rictibus tuis ora
Niliacus habet crocodilus angusta.'

So that the expression here is barely just.

Fate issues from his joys in streams of fire.'] This, too, is nearer truth than at first view may be imagined. The crocodile, say the naturalists, lying long under water, and being there forced to hold its breath, when it emerges, the breath long repressed is hot, and bursts out so violently, that it resembles fire and smoke. The horse suppresses not his breath by any means so long, neither is he so fierce and animated; yet the most correct of poets ventures to use the same metaphor concerning him.

"Collectumque premens volvit sub naribus ignem.'

By this and the foregoing note, I would caution against a false opinion of the eastern boldness, from passages in them ill understood.

Large is his front; and, when his burnish'd eyes
Lift their broad lids, the morning seems to rise.
In vain may death in various shapes invade,
The swift-wing'd arrow, the descending blade;
His naked breast their impotence defies;
The dart rebounds, the brittle falchion flies.
Shut in himself, the war without he hears,
Safe in the tempest of their rattling spears;
The cumber'd strand their wasted volleys strow;
His sport, the rage and labour of the foe.

His pastimes like a caldron boil the flood,
And blacken ocean with the rising mud;
The billows feel him as he works his way;
His hoary footsteps shine along the sea;
The foam high wrought, with white divides the green,
And distant sailors point where death has been.
His like, earth bears not on her spacious face;
Alone in nature stands his dauntless race,

Large is his front; and when his burnish'd eyes,' etc.] 'His eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.' I think this gives us as great an image of the thing it would express as can enter the thought of man. It is not improbable, that the Egyptians stole their hieroglyphic for the morning, which is the crocodile's eye, from this passage, though no commentator I have seen mentions it. It is easy to conceive how the Egyptians should be both readers and admirers of the writings of Moses; whom I suppose the author of this poem.

I have observed already, that three or four of the creatures here described are Egyptian; the two last are notoriously so; they are the river-horse and the crocodile, those celebrated inhabitants of the Nile; and on those two it is that our author chiefly dwells. It would have been expected, from an author more remote from that river than Moses, in a catalogue of creatures produced to magnify their Creator, to have dwelt on the two largest works of his hand, viz. the elephant and the whale: this is so natural an expectation, that some commentators have rendered Behemoth and Leviathan, the elephant and the whale, though the descriptions in our author will not admit of it; but Moses being (as we may well suppose) under an immediate terror of the hippopotamus and crocodile, from their daily mischiefs and ravages around him, it is very accountable why he should permit them to take place.

For utter ignorance of fear renown'd.
In wrath he rolls his baleful eye around;
Makes every swoll'n disdainful heart subside,
And holds dominion o'er the sons of pride.

Then the Chaldean eased his lab'ring breast,
With full conviction of his crime opprest.

Thou canst accomplish all things, Lord of might! And ev'ry thought is naked to thy sight. But oh! thy ways are wonderful, and lie Beyond the deepest reach of mortal eye. Oft have I heard of thine almighty pow'r; But never saw thee till this dreadful hour. O'erwhelm'd with shame, the Lord of life I see; Abhor myself, and give my soul to thee. Nor shall my weakness tempt thine anger more; Man was not made to question, but adore.'

THE END.

INDEX.

The Figures refer to the Pages.

ADDRESS to death, 6; to the great and indolent, 19;
to the lilies, 34; to the aged, 48; to God, 48, 50,
208, 211, 252, 253; to infidels, 51, 151; to the
ocean, 163; to the day of judgment, 202; to the
stars and their supposed inhabitants, 216, 226; to
night, 239; to man, 248; to Jesus Christ, 256;
to Lorenzo to awake, 258.

Adjuration, solemn, 249.
Afflictions beneficial, 206.

Age and disease harbingers of death, 43.
Allegory on sleep, 1; on time, 16; on aged trees,
48; on the end of life, 49; on learning, 73.

Altamont, death of, 78.

Ambition and avarice, their influence, 102, 106; the
true, 102; proof of immortality, 130.

Angels and men compared, 58.

Annihilation, absurdities of, 142.
Art, bad effects of, 68.

Astrology, the true, 223.

Author's prayer for himself, 256.

Bell, striking of the, its import, 2.
Bible, reading of, advised, 155, 179.
Bliss, earthly, its instability, 6.
Brutes, how superior to man, 129.

Christian, his dignity, 65; compared to a ship at
sea, 186; difference between him and worldly
men, 187.