Descending like bright Juno from her cloud,
With glance erratic round th’ enchanted ring—
She smiles on all above, and all below,
With regal condescension, and accepts
The worthless homage offered at her shrine.
Let not the reader hastily conclude that he has yet ascended with Mrs. Katharine A. Ware to the cloud-capped summit of turgidity. In the concluding passages of her perfectly ferocious poem, she excels herself. A higher Alp of nonsense towers above the smaller Alps we have already passed. To change the metaphor, all the former passages are mere rattling musket shot, compared to this concentrated, thundering discharge of the artillery of bombast:—
Last in the train of human misery,
Unconscious Madness rushed. The storm that beat
On his unsheltered head and naked breast,
Was calm to that which wildly raged within: