And there consummate their unfinished loves:
Pensive in mud they wallow all alone,
And snore and gruntle to each others moan.
It is a rather coarse, but clever parody on a simile in Dryden’s “Conquest of Granada,” part ii.:—
So two kind turtles, when a storm is nigh,
Look up, and see it gathering in the sky;
Each calls his mate to shelter in the groves,
Leaving, in murmurs, their unfinished loves;
Perch’d on some dropping branch, they sit alone,
And coo, and hearken to each other’s moan.