Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break,
So from that spring whence comfort seem'd to come
Discomfort swells.—ii, 25-28.
But thither in a sieve I'll sail,
And like a rat without a tail,
I'll do, I'll do and I'll do.—iii, 8-10.
This passage is a good example of what may be passed over in the first reading, yet which if understood adds greatly to the force of the effect. If the scholar knows that according to the old superstition a witch could take the form of an animal but could be identified by the fact that the tail was wanting, the idea of the hag's flying through the air on the wind to the tempest-tossed vessel bound for Aleppo, and on it taking the form of a
tailless rat to gnaw, and gnaw, and gnaw till the ship springs a leak, is sure to appeal to the youthful imagination.
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man that function