Whose wainscot seem’d as old as Noah’s ark,

Were divers shapes of ugly, ill-formed monsters,

Hung up on scutcheons like an old church aisle—

A blue boar rampant, and a griffin gules,

A gaping tyger, and a cat-o’-mountain,

What nature never form’d, nor madman dream’d,

Gorgons and hydras and chimæras dire;

And straight before him lay a dusty heap

Of ancient legers, books of evidence,

Old blazon’d pedigrees and antique rolls,