Jannes and Jambres stopped their flight, And with proud words allayed the affright. 'The God of slaves!' said they, 'how can he be More powerful than their master's deity?' And down they cast their rods, And muttered secret sounds that charm the servile gods, The evil spirits their charms obey, And in a subtle cloud they snatch the rods away, And serpents in their place the airy jugglers lay: Serpents in Egypt's monstrous land Were ready still at hand, And all at the Old Serpent's first command: And they, too, gaped, and they, too, hissed, And they their threatening tails did twist; But straight on both the Hebrew serpent flew, Broke both their active backs, and both it slew, And both almost at once devoured; So much was overpowered By God's miraculous creation His servant Nature's slightly wrought and feeble generation. V. On the famed bank the prophets stood, Touched with their rod, and wounded all the flood; Flood now no more, but a long vein of putrid blood; The helpless fish were found In their strange current drowned; The herbs and trees washed by the mortal tide About it blushed and died: The amazed crocodiles made haste to ground; From their vast trunks the dropping gore they spied, Thought it their own, and dreadfully aloud they cried: Nor all thy priests, nor thou, O King! couldst ever show From whence thy wandering Nile begins his course; Of this new Nile thou seest the sacred source, And as thy land that does o'erflow, Take heed lest this do so. What plague more just could on thy waters fall? The Hebrew infants' murder stains them all. The kind, instructing punishment enjoy; Whom the red river cannot mend, the Red Sea shall destroy. VI. The river yet gave one instruction more, And from the rotting fish and unconcocted gore, Which was but water just before, A loathsome host was quickly made, That scaled the banks, and with loud noise did all the country invade; As Nilus when he quits his sacred bed, (But like a friend he visits all the land With welcome presents in his hand,) So did this living tide the fields o'erspread. In vain the alarmed country tries To kill their noisome enemies, From the unexhausted source still new recruits arise: Nor does the earth these greedy troops suffice; The towns and houses they possess, The temples and the palaces, Nor Pharaoh nor his gods they fear, Both their importune croakings hear: Unsatiate yet they mount up higher, Where never sun-born frog durst to aspire, And in the silken beds their slimy members place, A luxury unknown before to all the watery race. VII.