The thing I mean and laugh at me,—­if so
He fears not I should do more mischief.—­Next
Lie bills and calculations much perplexed,
With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint 80
Traced over them in blue and yellow paint. 
Then comes a range of mathematical
Instruments, for plans nautical and statical,
A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass
With ink in it;—­a china cup that was 85
What it will never be again, I think,—­
A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink
The liquor doctors rail at—­and which I
Will quaff in spite of them—­and when we die
We’ll toss up who died first of drinking tea, 90
And cry out,—­’Heads or tails?’ where’er we be. 
Near that a dusty paint-box, some odd hooks,
A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books,
Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,
To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims, 95
Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray
Of figures,—­disentangle them who may. 
Baron de Tott’s Memoirs beside them lie,
And some odd volumes of old chemistry. 
Near those a most inexplicable thing, 100
With lead in the middle—­I’m conjecturing
How to make Henry understand; but no—­
I’ll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,
This secret in the pregnant womb of time,
Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme. 105

And here like some weird Archimage sit I,
Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,
The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind
Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind
The gentle spirit of our meek reviews 110
Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,
Ruffling the ocean of their self-content;—­
I sit—­and smile or sigh as is my bent,
But not for them—­Libeccio rushes round
With an inconstant and an idle sound, 115
I heed him more than them—­the thunder-smoke
Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak
Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;
The ripe corn under the undulating air
Undulates like an ocean;—­and the vines 120
Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines—­
The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill
The empty pauses of the blast;—­the hill
Looks hoary through the white electric rain,
And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain, 125
The interrupted thunder howls; above
One chasm of Heaven smiles, like the eye of Love
On the unquiet world;—­while such things are,
How could one worth your friendship heed the war
Of worms? the shriek of the world’s carrion jays, 130
Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?