His flakes of solid flesh are slow to part;

As steel his nerves, as adamant his heart.

When, late awak'd, 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.

* 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 eyes are like the eye-lids 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 riverhorse and the crocodile, those celebrated inhabitants of the Nile; and on these 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 bave rendered behemoth and leviathan, the elephant and 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 hippopotamos and crocodile, from their daily mischiefs and ravages around him, it is very accountable why he should permit them to take place.

His naked breast their impotence defies;
The dart rebounds, the brittle fauchion flies.
Shut in himself, the war without he hears,
Safe in the tempeft of their rattling spears;
The cumber'd strand their wasted vollies strow;
His sport, the rage and labour of the foe.

His pastimes like a cauldron 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,
For utter ignorance of fear renown'd,
In wrath he rolls his baleful eye around:
Makes ev'ry swoln, disdainful heart, subside,
And holds dominion o'er the sons of pride.

Then the Chaldæun eas'd his lab'ring breast,
With full conviction of his crime opprest.

"Thou can'st 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 hear'd 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 is not made to question, but adore."

OCEA N.

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