 | Fantasy and Passion |  |
38
A BAT.
Haphazard hybrid that one sees,
Half bird, half reptile, fluttering through
Those sultry twilights when the trees
Loom breezeless on the dreamy blue;
Strange blundering mongrel of the air,
At random war with here and there,
Now wheeling wild and swooping now;
In what mad mood did Nature please
Her sweet rich harmonies to scare
With such dark dissonance as thou?
Shape that unseemliest traits endow,
Grotesque, chimeric, cold, impure,
With Satan's wings in miniature!
Half bird, half reptile, fluttering through
Those sultry twilights when the trees
Loom breezeless on the dreamy blue;
Strange blundering mongrel of the air,
At random war with here and there,
Now wheeling wild and swooping now;
In what mad mood did Nature please
Her sweet rich harmonies to scare
With such dark dissonance as thou?
Shape that unseemliest traits endow,
Grotesque, chimeric, cold, impure,
With Satan's wings in miniature!
Nay, is it that thou lingerest here
As the last-left weak heir of what
Survives from many a wrecking year
In shadowy fable, trusted not?
Does altered time in thee behold
One waif from horrors manifold,
Ghoul, griffon, dragon, ouph, gnome, sprite,
That living shook the world with fear,
And dying when the earth was old,
In mockery of their crumbled might
Foredoomed thy tortuous dismal flight
Where once by terror and dismay
Thine awful ancestry held sway?
As the last-left weak heir of what
Survives from many a wrecking year
In shadowy fable, trusted not?
Does altered time in thee behold
One waif from horrors manifold,
Ghoul, griffon, dragon, ouph, gnome, sprite,
That living shook the world with fear,
And dying when the earth was old,
In mockery of their crumbled might
Foredoomed thy tortuous dismal flight
Where once by terror and dismay
Thine awful ancestry held sway?
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