The Downing legends : Stories in Rhyme :: :: University of Virginia Library

No doubt the centuries of old,
Ere Adam walked in Paradise,
Had beasts of various monstrous mould
Whose forms would thunderstrike our eyes.
But none of those abnormal shapes
Would fright us nearer unto death
Than certain birds, as big as apes,
Whose yardlong bills were fringed with teeth.
Such nondescripts, the very last
Of their primeval, devilish breed,
Now hasted swift as mountain blast
To serve the Wampanoag's need.

In all the years that Downing fought
He waged no madder, wilder strife;
And more than once he grimly thought
Those snapping fowl would end his life.
They wheeled above with deafening shriek,
They banged with pinion, tore with beak,
And fetched the gore in many a streak.
In vain he hurtled blow on blow;
His sabre merely gashed the air.
In vain he drew his wizard bow;
The creatures dodged, with room to spare.
At last, despairing how to win
The puzzling fight by martial might,
The fancy came that he might grin
The feathered pests to death, or flight.

Like Crockett he could grin the bark
Off gnarled and knotty oaken trees

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And leave the awestruck wood as stark
And glossy as a Holland cheese.
But how should merely human jaws
Excel in grinning goblin things
Who had as many teeth as saws,
And bills outmeasuring their wings?
They formed a circle round the chief
And grinned as only they knew how;
They smirked him nearly blind and deaf,
They smiled him raw from chin to brow.
They grinned his epaulets to dust,
The lace and buttons from his suit;
They grinned his scabbard clean of rust,
They nearly grinned him to a brute.
The hero's strategy was lost
On hostiles built for dental fame;
And so, in anguish terror-tost,
He sabred on till evening came.