present mood. 830

And, grinning in his turn, his teeth
He in jocose defiance showed--
When, to upset [92] his spiteful mirth,
A murmur, pent within the earth,
In the dead earth beneath the road, 835

Rolled audibly! it swept along,
A muffled noise--a rumbling sound!--
'Twas by a troop of miners made,
Plying with gunpowder their trade,
Some twenty fathoms underground. 840

Small cause of dire effect! for, surely,
If ever mortal, King or Cotter,
Believed that earth was charged to quake
And yawn for his unworthy sake,
'Twas Peter Bell the Potter. 845

But, as an oak in breathless air
Will stand though to the centre hewn;
Or as the weakest things, if frost
Have stiffened them, maintain their post;
So he, beneath the gazing moon!--850

The Beast bestriding thus, he reached
A spot where, in a sheltering cove, [93]
A little chapel stands alone,
With greenest ivy overgrown,
And tufted with an ivy grove; 855

Dying insensibly away
From human thoughts and purposes,
It seemed--wall, window, roof and tower [94]--
To bow to some transforming power,
And blend with the surrounding trees. 860

As ruinous a place it was,
Thought Peter, in the shire of Fife
That served my turn, when following still
From land to land a reckless will [95]
I married my sixth wife! 865

The unheeding Ass moves slowly on,
And now is passing by an inn
Brim-full of a carousing crew,
That make, [96] with curses not a few,
An uproar and a drunken din. 870

I cannot well express the thoughts
Which Peter in those noises found;--
A stifling power compressed his frame,
While-as a swimming darkness came [97]
Over that dull and dreary sound. 875

For well did Peter know the sound;
The language of those drunken joys
To him, a jovial soul, I ween,
But a few hours ago, had been
A gladsome and a welcome noise. 880

_Now_, [98] turned adrift into the past,
He finds no solace in his course;
Like planet-stricken men of yore,
He trembles, smitten to the core
By strong compunction and remorse. 885

But, more than all, his heart is stung
To think of one, almost a c