A Crocodile

Brendan Wenzel

A Crocodile




Hard by the lilied Nile I saw

 A duskish river-dragon stretched along, 

The brown habergeon of his limbs enamelled 

With sanguine almandines and rainy pearl: 

And on his back there lay a young one sleeping, 

No bigger than a mouse; with eyes like beads, 

And a small fragment of its speckled egg 

Remaining on its harmless, pulpy snout; 

A thing to laugh at, as it gaped to catch 

The baulking merry flies. In the iron jaws 

Of the great devil-beast, like a pale soul 

Fluttering in rocky hell, lightsomely flew 

A snowy trochilus, with roseate beak 

Tearing the hairy leeches from his throat.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

from The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, ed. Phillis Levin

Here's an example of a poet in full, exuberant vocabulary display .
Beddoes opens up a peacock fan of a poem - "brown habergeon" = a sleeveless coat
of mail or scale armor, "sanguine almandines" = blood-red coloured gemstones, "rainy pearl" = we all know what this means, but what a description! Rainy? Pearl like a liquid! I had to look all these words up, and that's exactly what I like. New-to-me words, toothsome mouth-full, potent words, words that give you something to chew over. 

And tell me how often you come across a phrase like "baulking merry flies"? What an image! They do seem merry, dancing and dipping and hovering hopefully. Or that wonderful "like a pale soul fluttering in rocky hell", gosh if I don't have an illustration by Edward Gorey appear in my head when I read that. A "snowy trochilus" is a kind of hummingbird, apparently. And "hairy leeches"? Good grief. What a fulsome poem.