Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/194

Unnumber'd joints distort their lengthen'd thighs;
With nervous cords their hands are firmly brac'd;
Their round black eyeballs in their bosom plac'd;
On eight long feet the wondrous warriors tread;
And either end alike supplies a head.
These, mortal wits to call the crabs agree,
The gods have other names for things than we.

Now where the jointures from their loins depend,
The heroes' tails with severing grasps they rend.
Here, short of feet, depriv'd the power to fly,
There, without hands, upon the field they lie.
Wrench'd from their holds, and scatter'd all around,
The bended lances heap the cumber'd ground.
Helpless amazement, fear pursuing fear,
And mad confusion through their host appear:
O'er the wild waste with headlong flight they go,
Or creep conceal'd in vaulted holes below.

But down Olympus to the western seas
Far- shooting Phœbus drove with fainter rays;
And a whole war (so Jove ordain'd) begun,
Was fought, and ceas'd, in one revolving sun.