Even as in heaven star followeth after star,
There came close after them four animals,
Incoronate each one with verdant leaf.
Plumed with six wings was every one of them,
The plumage full of eyes; the eyes of Argus
If they were living would be such as these.
Reader! to trace their forms no more I waste
My rhymes; for other spendings press me so,
That I in this cannot be prodigal.
But read Ezekiel, who depicteth them
As he beheld them from the region cold
Coming with cloud, with whirlwind, and with fire;
And such as thou shalt find them in his pages,
Such were they here; saving that in their plumage
John is with me, and differeth from him.
The interval between these four contained
A chariot triumphal on two wheels,
Which by a Griffin’s neck came drawn along;
And upward he extended both his wings
Between the middle list and three and three,
So that he injured none by cleaving it.
So high they rose that they were lost to sight;
His limbs were gold, so far as he was bird,
And white the others with vermilion mingled.
Not only Rome with no such splendid car
E’er gladdened Africanus, or Augustus,
But poor to it that of the Sun would be,—
That of the Sun, which swerving was burnt up
At the importunate orison of Earth,
When Jove was so mysteriously just.