Her beautiful attire, and deck'd her robe
Of verdure with ten thousand glorious flowers,
Exhaling incense; crown'd her mountain-heads
With cedars, train'd her vines around their girdles,
And pour'd spontaneous harvests at their feet.
Nor were those woods without inhabitants
Besides the ephemera of earth and air;
--Where glid the sunbeams through the latticed boughs,
And fell like dew-drops on the spangled ground,
To light the diamond-beetle on his way;
--Where cheerful openings let the sky look down
Into the very heart of solitude,
On little garden-pots of social flowers,
That crowded from the shades to peep at daylight;
--Or where unpermeable foliage made
Midnight at noon, and chill, damp horror reign'd
O'er dead, fall'n leaves and slimy funguses;
--Reptiles were quicken'd into various birth.
Loathsome, unsightly, swoln to obscene bulk,
Lurk'd the dark toad beneath the infected turf;
The slow-worm crawl'd, the light cameleon climb'd,
And changed his colour as his pace he changed;
The nimble lizard ran from bough to bough,
Glancing through light, in shadow disappearing;
The scorpion, many-eyed, with sting of fire,
Bred there,--the legion-fiend of creeping things;
Terribly beautiful, the serpent lay,
Wreath'd like a coronet of gold and jewels,
Fit for a tyrant's brow; anon he flew
Straight as an arrow shot from his own rings,
And struck his victim, shrieking ere it went
Down his strain'd throat, that open sepulchre.
Amphibious monsters haunted the lagoon;
The hippopotamus, amidst the flood,
Flexile and active as the smallest swimmer;
But on the bank, ill balanced and infirm,
He grazed the herbage, with huge, head declined,
Or lean'd to rest against some ancient tree.
The crocodile, the dragon of the waters,
In iron panoply, fell as the plague,
And merciless as famine, cranch'd his prey,
While, from his jaws, with dreadful fangs all serried,
The life-blood dyed the waves with deadly streams.
The seal and the sea-lion, from the gulf
Came forth, and couching with their little ones.
Slept on the shelving rocks that girt the shores,
Securing prompt retreat from sudden danger;
The pregnant turtle, stealing out at eve,
With anxious eye, and trembling heart, explored
The loneliest coves, and in the loose warm sand
Deposited her eggs, which the sun hatch'd:
Hence the young brood, that never knew a parent,
Unbu