Ere I had long the trial made,
A serious thought made me afraid:
For I had heard Parnassus' sacred hill
Was so prodigiously high,
Its barren top so near the sky;
The ether there
So very pure, so subtil, and so rare,
'Twould a chameleon kill,
90The beast that is all lungs, and feeds on air:
Poets the higher up that hill they go,