Around me flitted unnumbered swarms Of shapeless, bodiless, tailless forms; (Like bottled up babes, that grace the room Of that worthy knight, Sir Everard Home)―― All of them things half-kill’d in rearing; Some were lame――some wanted _hearing_; Some had through half a century run, Though they hadn’t a leg to stand upon. Others, more merry, as just beginning, Around on a _point of law_ were spinning; Or balanced aloft, ’twixt _Bill_ and _Answer_, Lead at each hand, like a tight-rope dancer―― Some were so _cross_, that nothing could please ’em; Some gulp’d down _affidavits_ to ease ’em; All were in motion, yet never a one, Let it _move_ as it might, could ever move _on_. “These,” said the spirit, “You plainly see, Are what they call suits in Chancery!” I heard a loud screaming of old and young, Like a chorus by fifty Vellutis’ sung; Or an Irish dump (“the words by Moore”) At an amateur concert scream’d in score;―― So harsh on my ear that wailing fell Of the wretches who in this limbo dwell! It seemed like the dismal symphony Of the shapes Æneas in hell did see; Or those frogs, whose legs a barbarous cook Cut off and left the frogs in the brook, To cry all night, till life’s last dregs, “Give us our legs!――give us our legs!” Touched with the sad and sorrowful scene, I ask’d what all this yell might mean, When the spirit replied with a grin of glee, “’Tis the cry of the suitors in Chancery!” I look’d, and I saw a wizard rise,[90] With a wig like a cloud before men’s eyes. In his aged hand he held a wand, Wherewith he beckoned his embryo band, And they mov’d and mov’d, as he waved it o’er, But they never got on one inch the more, And still they kept limping to and fro, Like Ariels, ’round old Prospero―― Saying “dear master, let us go,” But still old Prospero answered “No,” And I heard, the while, that wizard elf, Muttering, muttering spells to himself, While o’er as many old papers he turn’d, As Hume e’er moved for, or Omar burned. He talked of his virtue――’though some, less nice, (He owned with a sigh) preferr’d his _Vice_―― And he said “I think”――“I doubt”――“I hope”―― Call’d God to witness, and damn’d the Pope; With many more sleights of tongue and hand I couldn’t for the soul of me understand. Amaz’d and poz’d, I was just about To ask his name, when the screams without The merciless clack of the imps within, And that conjuror’s mutterings, made such a din, That startled, I woke――leap’d up in my bed―― Found the spirit, the imps, and the conjurer fled, And blessed my stars, right pleased to see, That I wasn’t, as yet, in Chancery. THOMAS MOORE. (This poem originally appeared in _The Times_, 1826.) FRAGMENT OF A VISION.