There Tubal sat, Who from his harp delivered music, sweet As any in the spheres.

Yea, more; Earth's latest wonder, on the walls appeared, Unfinished, workmen clustering on its ribs; And farther back, within the rock hewn out, Angelic figures stood, that impious hands Had fashioned; many golden lamps they held By golden chains depending, and their eyes All tended in a reverend quietude Toward the couch whereon the dragon lay.
The floor was beaten gold; the curly lengths Of his last coils lay on it, hid from sight With a coverlet made stiff with crusting gems, Fire opals shooting, rubies, fierce bright eyes Of diamonds, or the pale green emerald, That changed their lustre when he breathed.
His head Feathered with crimson combs, and all his neck, And half-shut fans of his admired wings, That in their scaly splendor put to shame Or gold or stone, lay on his ivory couch And shivered; for the dragon suffered pain: He suffered and he feared.

It was his doom, The tempter, that he never should depart From the bright creature that in Paradise He for his evil purpose erst possessed, Until it died.

Thus only, spirit of might And chiefest spirit of ill, could he be free.
But with its nature wed, as souls of men Are wedded to their clay, he took the dread Of death and dying, and the coward heart Of the beast, and craven terrors of the end Sank him that habited within it to dread Disunion.

He, a dark dominion erst Rebellious, lay and trembled, for the flesh Daunted his immaterial.