Original - Duke Divinity School

Or Dutch low-built and squat, or slimmer Dane,
Four-footed Wit, with roguy Visage sly:
Or nobler Kinds, too near, alas! extinct,
The Irish Greyhound or the English Mastiff;
Or fav’rite Brood of Charles, discerning King,
To spy Perfection or in Beast or Man!
Or rather else from Parentage unknown,
Like ancient Heroes sprung from Mother Earth,
The general Mother Earth, without a Sire?
For Sires beget their Like, and propagate
Their Kinds; but like to This was never found.
His Colours strange, what mortal Painter’s Hand.
With all his Lights and Shadings can express?
Inexplicably grisly! But his Tail,
Oh! had’st Thou seen his Tail, the matchless Shape
Th’ identick Shape thy Memory would retain,
Engraven in eternal Characters! 132
A Line like which not Archimedes old
In yielding Sand e’er trac’d, nor greater Skill
Of modern Newton e’er has yet on Slate
’Midst Figures Curve or Rectilinear drawn:
Transverse, unjointed from the Sacred Bone,
It stood, as nought of kindred to the Parts
Posterior whence it grew, or rather seem’d
To adhere, not native there. So Misseltoe
Seems only grafted on its parent Oak.
Nor uniform the Girth; part dangling lithe,
Part horizontal, stiff; tho’ not so stiff
132 Omits next line: “While Memory holds its Empire in the Brain,”
80