There were no wings upon the stranger’s shoulders. 
And yet he seemed so capable of rising 90
  That, had he soared like thistle-down, beholders
Had thought the circumstance noways surprising;
  Enough that he remained, and, when the scolders
Hailed him as umpire in their vocal prize-ring,
  The painter of his boat he lightly threw
  Around a lotos-stem, and brought her to.

  The strange youth had a look as if he might
Have trod far planets where the atmosphere
  (Of nobler temper) steeps the face with light,
Just as our skins are tanned and freckled here; 100
  His air was that of a cosmopolite
In the wide universe from sphere to sphere;
  Perhaps he was (his face had such grave beauty)
  An officer of Saturn’s guards off duty.

  Both saints began to unfold their tales at once,
Both wished their tales, like simial ones, prehensile,
  That they might seize his ear; fool! knave! and dunce!
Flew zigzag back and forth, like strokes of pencil
  In a child’s fingers; voluble as duns,
They jabbered like the stones on that immense hill 110
  In the Arabian Nights; until the stranger
  Began to think his ear-drums in some danger.

  In general those who nothing have to say
Contrive to spend the longest time in doing it;
  They turn and vary it in every way,
Hashing it, stewing it, mincing it, ragouting it;
  Sometimes they keep it purposely at bay,
Then let it slip to be again pursuing it;
  They drone it, groan it, whisper it and shout it,
  Refute it, flout it, swear to ’t, prove it, doubt it. 120

  Our saints had practised for some thirty years;
Their talk, beginning with a single stem,
  Spread like a banyan, sending down live piers,
Colonies of digression, and, in them,
  Germs of yet new dispersion; once by the ears,
They could convey damnation in a hem,
  And blow the pinch of premise-priming off
  Long syllogistic batteries, with a cough.

  Each had a theory that the human ear
A providential tunnel was, which led 130
  To a huge vacuum (and surely here
They showed some knowledge of the general head,)
  For cant to be decanted through, a mere
Auricular canal or mill-race fed
  All day and night, in sunshine and in shower,
  From their vast heads of milk-and-water-power.

  The present being a peculiar case,
Each with unwonted zeal the other scouted,
  Put his spurred hobby through its every pace, 139
Pished, pshawed, poohed, horribled, bahed, jeered, sneered, flouted,
  Sniffed, nonsensed, infideled, fudged, with his face
Looked scorn too nicely shaded to be shouted,
  And, with each inch of person and of vesture,
  Contrived to hint some most disdainful gesture.