12 The Poets Beasts, 



" In weary length 

 The enormous lion rests his strength. 

 For blood in dreams of hunting burns ; 

 Or, chased himself, to fight returns. 

 Growls in his sleep, a dreary sound, 

 Grinds his wedged teeth and spurns the ground." 



" There, bent on death, lie hid his tawny brood, 

 And couched in dreadful ambush, pant for blood ; 

 Or stretched on broken limbs, consume the day 

 In darkness wrapt, and slumber o'er their prey." 



That lion-cubs eat tiger-cubs (Southey), but avoid bears 

 and bulls till they are grown up (Cowley), are two details of 

 poetical natural history which seem to rest on an insuf- 

 ficient foundation of fact. The following also seems to be 

 a sketch from Southey's imagination : — 



" A lion vainly struggled in the toils. 

 Whilst by his side the cub, in furious rage. 

 His young mane floating to the desert air. 

 Rends the fallen huntsman." 



Of the beast in nature poetry is full, from the half-created 

 lion of the morning of the sixth day "pawing to get free 

 his hinder parts" (Melton) — 



" Tlie roaring lion shakes his tawny mane, 

 His struggling limbs still rooted in tlie plain " {Daizvin) — 



to the final lion of the Apocalypse that shall have six wings,, 

 and eyes before and behind ; from the cub, whelped upon 

 a litter of mumbled bones, to the old toothless brute blunder- 

 ing into the Kafir's pitfall, and — 



" liy the wily African belrnycd, 

 Heedless of fate, wiiliin its gaping jaws 

 Expiring indignant." 



Tut, as a rule, the lion is not merely the natural beast, 

 it is the "dread king," autocrat of the forest and desert, 



