Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/389

Rh Of some machine portentous, or strange gin, Which by the force of figured spells might win Its way over the sea, and sport therein; For round the walls are hung dread engines, such As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch Ixion or the Titan:— or the quick Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic, To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic, Or those in philanthropic council met, Who thought to pay some interest for the debt They owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation, By giving a faint foretaste of damnation To Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and the rest Who made our land an island of the blest. When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire On Freedom's hearth, grew dim with Empire:— With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag. Which fishers found under the utmost crag Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles, Where to the sky the rude sea rarely smiles Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn When the exulting elements in scorn, Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey, As panthers sleep;— and other strange and dread Magical forms the brick floor overspread,— Proteus transformed to metal did not make More figures, or more strange;• nor did he take Such shapes of unintelligible brass, Or heap himself in such a horrid mass Of tin and iron not to be understood; And forms of unimaginable wood, To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood: Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and groovèd blocks, The elements of what will stand the shocks Of wave and wind and time.—Upon the table More knacks and quips there be than I am able To catalogize in this verse of mine:— A pretty bowl of wood—not full of wine, But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink When at their subterranean toil they swink, Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who Reply to them in lava—cry halloo! And call out to the cities o'er their head,— Roofs, towers, and shrines, the dying and the dead, Crash through the chinks of earth—and then all quaff Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh.