Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/211

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hither, boy, we'll hunt to-day The book-worm, ravening beast of prey, Produc'd by parent Earth, at odds, As fame reports it, with the gods. Him frantic hunger wildly drives Against a thousand authors' lives: Through all the fields of wit he flies; Dreadful his head with clustering eyes, With horns without, and tusks within, And scales to serve him for a skin. Observe him nearly, lest he climb To wound the bards of ancient time, Or down the vale of fancy go To tear some modern wretch below. On every corner fix thine eye, Or ten to one he slips thee by.

See where his teeth a passage eat: We'll rouse him from the deep retreat. But who the shelter's forc'd to give? 'Tis sacred Virgil, as I live! From leaf to leaf, from song to song, He draws the tadpole form along, He mounts the gilded edge before, He's up, he scuds the cover o'er,