With pestilence-breathing jaws that blackly gape
For indiscriminate prey, is sure a thing
To set celestial guards once more a-wing;
To fire a new St. Michael or St. George
With the bright death to cleave the monster's gorge,
And trample out the Laidly Worm's last breath
In the convulsions of reluctant death.
A crawling, craven, sneaking, snaking brute;
Purposeless spite, and hatred absolute,
In hideous shape incarnate! Venomed Gad
In Civilisation's path; malignant-mad,
And blindly biting; raising an asp-neck
In Beauty's foot-tracks, and prepared to wreck
The ordered work of ages in a day,
To raze and shatter, to abase and slay.
Blind as the earthquake, headlong as the storm,
Yet in such hideous subter-human form,
Vulgar as venomous! Dragon indeed,
And dangerous, but with no soul save greed,
No aim save chaos. Bloody, yet so blind,
The common enemy of humankind;
Whose age-stored works and ways it yearns to blast,
To smite to ruined fragments, and to cast
Prone--as itself is prone--in common dust.
The Beautiful, the Wise, the Strong, the Just,
All fruit of labour, and all spoil of thought,
All that co-operant Man hath won or wrought,
All that the heart has loved, the mind has taught
Through the long generations, hoarded gains
Of plastic fancies, and of potent brains;
Thrones, Temples, Marts, Art's alcoves, Learning's domes,
Patrician palaces, and _bourgeois_ homes.
Down, down!--to glut _its_ spleen, the paltry thing,
Impotent, save to lurk, and coil, and spring,
But powerful as the poison-drop, once sped,
That creeps, corrupts, and leaves its victim--dead!
As the asp's fang could turn to pulseless clay
The Pride of Egypt, so this Worm can slay
If left long covert for its crawling course.
Up, up against it every virile force,
And every valorous virtue! By its hiss
'Tis known _hostis humani generis_,
Let Civilisation snatch St. Michael's sword,
And slay this Dragon, of a tribe abhorred
The meanest and the most malignant Worm
Which can spill venom, but, attacked, will squirm,
Shrink, splutter, vanish. With no noble end,
All men must be its foes, blind hatred its sole friend!

* * * * *

BREAKING.

[In his spot-barred Billiard-Match with H. COLES, PEALL made
breaks of 108, 133, 64, 52, 78, 77, and 80.]

Break, break, break
On thy Billiard-board, oh P.!
As easy as