The Giant In Glee.

("Ho, guerriers! je suis n dans le pays des Gaules.")     [V., March 11, 1825.]     Ho, warriors! I was reared in the land of the Gauls;     O'er the Rhine my ancestors came bounding like balls     Of the snow at the Pole, where, a babe, I was bathed     Ere in bear and in walrus-skin I was enswathed.     Then my father was strong, whom the years lowly bow, -     A bison could wallow in the grooves of his brow.     He is weak, very old - he can scarcely uptear     A young pine-tree for staff since his legs cease to bear;     But here's to replace him! - I can toy with his axe;     As I sit on the hill my feet swing in the flax,     And my knee caps the boulders and troubles the trees.     How they shiver, yea, quake if I happen to sneeze!     I was still but a springald when, cleaving the Alps,     I brushed snowy periwigs off granitic scalps,     And my head, o'er the pinnacles, stopped the fleet clouds,     Where I captured the eagles and caged them by crowds.     There were tempests! I blew them back into their source!     And put out their lightnings! More than once in a course,     Through the ocean I went wading after the whale,     And stirred up the bottom as did never a gale.     Fond of rambling, I hunted the shark 'long the beach,     And no osprey in ether soared out of my reach;     And the bear that I pinched 'twixt my finger and thumb,     Like the lynx and the wolf, perished harmless and dumb.     But these pleasures of childhood have lost all their zest;     It is warfare and carnage that now I love best:     The sounds that I wish to awaken and hear     Are the cheers raised by courage, the shrieks due to fear;     When the riot of flames, ruin, smoke, steel and blood,     Announces an army rolls along as a flood,     Which I follow, to harry the clamorous ranks,     Sharp-goading the laggards and pressing the flanks,     Till, a thresher 'mid ripest of corn, up I stand     With an oak for a flail in my unflagging hand.     Rise the groans! rise the screams! on my feet fall vain tears     As the roar of my laughter redoubles their fears.     I am naked. At armor of steel I should joke -     True, I'm helmed - a brass pot you could draw with ten yoke.     I look for no ladder to invade the king's hall -     I stride o'er the ramparts, and down the walls fall,     Till choked are the ditches with the stones, dead and quick,     Whilst the flagstaff I use 'midst my teeth as a pick.     Oh, when cometh my turn to succumb like my prey,     May brave men my body snatch away from th' array     Of the crows - may they heap on the rocks till they loom     Like a mountain, befitting a colossus' tomb!     Foreign Quarterly Review (adapted)