Her love ye hailed—her wrath have felt!
But She through many a change of form hath gone,
And stands amidst you now an armèd creature,
Whose panoply is not a thing put on,
But the live scales of a portentous nature;
That, having forced[154] its way from birth to birth,
Stalks round-abhorred by Heaven, a terror to the Earth!
II
I marked the breathings of her dragon crest;
My Soul, a sorrowful interpreter,