Thresh your wheat, mend your ploughs,
If you'll give me some gin."

"You infernal son of Pan!"
Began the sage old man,

"Just dare to touch that bottle, you
Scoundrel, and I'll throttle you!"

He changed in an instant, and set up a howl,
And flew through the window-pane broken, a grim,
Great-eyed, and horrible loud-hooting owl,

As if a new pain had just broken in him.

On a sudden great laughs, and a-sudden great groans,
And the house was thick pelted with showers of stones,
A flash of great flames, and a wonderful light,
And a rattle of chains that affrighted the night.

But amid the noisy storm,
Came a most angelic thing,

Like a woman in her form,
And a seraph in her wing.

Her eye was like the summer sky,
Which golden beams shoot through,

Reflected in a violet,

Upon a drop of dew!

Her clustered curls danced round her head,

Like golden bees when swarming,

As if to settle on her mouth,

So honey red, and charming.
Her faultless figures showed so well,
That like the rainbow bended,

Where one charm sprang, you scarce could tell,

Or where another ended.—

There the philosophic sage sat gazing,
On this beauty so amazing.

By her transcendent charms o'erpowered.
His tongue became a coward

To his heart's ecstatic bliss

To crave the heaven of her kiss.

But, instead of this demand,

He stroke his beard down with his hand,

And, with accents mild and bland,

Said politely, neither more nor less,

Than, "Whom have I the honor to address ?"

Then, the Presence with a smile

Beatifically kind,

More blesséd than the sunshine

That falleth on the blind,

Replied, "I am, most learned sage,
The long sought for, of every age.
In this sphere I had my birth;
Coeval with the prime of earth,
My fate has been, for ever

To wander o'er its face