Gracefullest leaper, the dappled fox-cub Curves over brambles with berries and buds, Light as a bubble that flies from the tub, Whisked by the laundry-wife out of her suds. Wavy he comes, woolly, all at his ease, Elegant, fashioned to foot with the deuce; Nature's own prince of the dance: then he sees Me, and retires as if making excuse. II. Never closed minuet courtlier! Soon Cub-hunting troops were abroad, and a yelp Told of sure scent: ere the stroke upon noon Reynard the younger lay far beyond help. Wild, my poor friend, has the fate to be chased; Civil will conquer: were 'tother 'twere worse. Fair, by the flushed early morning embraced, Haply you live a day longer in verse. MANFRED Projected from the bilious Childe, This clatterjaw his foot could set On Alps, without a breast beguiled To glow in shedding rascal sweat. Somewhere about his grinder teeth, He mouthed of thoughts that grilled beneath, And summoned Nature to her feud With bile & buskin Attitude. II. Considerably was the world Of spinsterdom and clergy racked While he his hinted horrors hurled, And she pictorially attacked. A duel hugeous! Tragic? Ho! The cities, not the mountains, blow Such bladders; in their shapes confessed An after-dinner's indigest. HERNANI Cistercians might crack their sides With laughter, and exemption get, At sight of heroes clasping brides, And hearing--O the horn! the horn! The horn of their obstructive debt! But quit the stage, that note applies For sermons cosmopolitan, Hernani. Have we filched our prize, Forgetting...? O the horn! the horn! The horn of the Old Gentleman! THE NUPTIALS OF ATTILA I. Flat as to an eagle's eye, Earth hung under Attila. Sign for carnage gave he none. In the peace of his disdain, Sun and rain, and rain and sun, Cherished men to wax again, Crawl, and in their manner die. On his people stood a frost. Like the charger cut in stone, Rearing stiff, the warrior host, Which had life from him alone, Craved the trumpet's eager note, As the bridled earth the Spring. Rusty was the trumpet's throat. He let chief and prophet rave; Venturous earth around him string Threads of grass and slender rye, Wave them, and untrampled wave. O for the time when God did cry, Eye and have, my Attila! II. Scorn of conquest filled like sleep Him that drank of havoc deep When the Green Cat pawed the globe: When the horsemen from his bow Shot in sheaves and made the foe Crimson fringes of a robe, Trailed o'er towns and fields in woe; When they streaked the rivers red, When the saddle was the bed. Attila, my Attila! III.