That place alone was barren where it lay; Flowers bloomed beyond, utterly sweet and fair; And even its own dull heart might think to stay In livelong thirst of a clear river there, Flowing from unseen hills to unheard seas, Through a still vale of yew and almond trees. And then I spied in the lush green below Its tortured belly, One, like silver, pale, With fingers closed upon a rope of straw, That bound the Beast, squat neck to hoary tail; Lonely in all that verdure faint and deep, He watched the monster as a shepherd sheep. I marvelled at the power, strength, and rage Of this poor creature in such slavery bound; Tettered with worms of fear; forlorn with age; Its blue wing-stumps stretched helpless on the ground; While twilight faded into darkness deep, And he who watched it piped its pangs asleep. IDLENESS I saw old Idleness, fat, with great cheeks Puffed to the huge circumference of a sigh, But past all tinge of apples long ago. His boyish fingers twiddled up and down The filthy remnant of a cup of physic That thicked in odour all the while he stayed. His eyes were sad as fishes that swim up And stare upon an element not theirs Through a thin skin of shrewish water, then Turn on a languid fin, and dip down, down, Into unplumbed, vast, oozy deeps of dream. His stomach was his master, and proclaimed it; And never were such meagre puppets made The slaves of such a tyrant, as his thoughts Of that obese epitome of ills. Trussed up he sat, the mockery of himself; And when upon the wan green of his eye I marked the gathering lustre of a tear, Thought I myself must weep, until I caught A grey, smug smile of satisfaction smirch His pallid features at his misery. And laugh did I, to see the little snares He had set for pests to vex him: his great feet Prisoned in greater boots; so narrow a stool To seat such elephantine parts as his; Ay, and the book he read, a Hebrew Bible; And, to incite a gross and backward wit, An old, crabbed, wormed, Greek dictionary; and A foxy Ovid bound in dappled calf. GOLIATH