Advance by steps and sway the merc’less scythe;

Aye: how so natural the golden grain

Seems, aged-like, incline to earth again,

And, as the harvesters with rigid eye

Thrust forth the sickle most contemptuously,

How great the fall, but where the weapon’s cry? * * *

[198] The painter’s.

II.

While thus the muse compares the works of God

With that of man, twelve miles of country road