Thus oft they rear, and oft the head decline,
As breathe or pause by fits the airs divine:
And now to this side, now to that they nod," etc.
The clerk,[121] infinitely more important than the divine, is kept awake by contemplating the charms of a voluptuously blooming damsel, who, in studying the Service of Matrimony, has sighed her soul to rest. The eyes of this pronouncer of Amen are visibly directed to her.
In the pew opposite are five swains of the village;
"Each mouth distended, and each head reclin'd,
They soundly sleep."
To render this rural scene more pastoral, they are accompanied by two women who have once been shepherdesses, and perhaps celebrated by some neighbouring Theocritus as the Chloe and Daphne of their day. Being now in the wane of their charms, poetical justice will not allow us to give them any other appellation than old women. They are awake. Whether the artist intended by this to show that they are actuated by the spirit of contradiction, for the preacher entreats them to go to rest, or meant it as a compliment to the softer sex, as being more attentive than men, I cannot tell; let those who have studied their characters more than I have, determine as seemeth best in their eyes.
In the gallery are two men joining in chorus with the band below. One of them has the decency to hide his face; but the other is evidently in full song.
The heavy architecture and grotesque decorations lead us to conjecture that this now venerable edifice was once the cottage of Baucis and Philemon, so exquisitely described by Swift: