Shorn of its best and loveliest, and left bare;

But still it falls in vast and awful splinters,

As oaks blown down with all their thousand winters.

LXXXIX.

It is an awful topic—but 't is not

My cue for any time to be terrific:

For checkered as is seen our human lot

With good, and bad, and worse, alike prolific

Of melancholy merriment, to quote

Too much of one sort would be soporific;—