After remarks on Peter's strange state of mind when saluted by this
horrible music, and describing him as preparing to seize the ass by the
neck, we are told his purpose was interrupted by something he just then
saw in the water, which afterwards proves to be a corpse. The reader is,
however, first excited and disposed to expect something horrible by the
following startling conjectures:--

"Is it the moon's distorted face?
The ghost-like image of a cloud?
Is it a gallows these pourtrayed?
Is Peter of himself afraid?
Is it a coffin--or a shroud?

"A grisly idol hewn in stone?
Or imp from witch's lap let fall?
Or a gay ring of shining fairies,
Such as pursue their brisk vagaries
In sylvan bower or haunted hall?

"Is it a fiend that to a stake
Of fire his desperate self is tethering?
Or stubborn spirit doomed to yell
In solitary ward or cell,
Ten thousand miles from all his brethren."

"Is it a party in a parlour?
Cramm'd just as they on earth revere cramm'd--
Some sipping punch, some sipping tea,
But, as you by their faces see,
All silent and all damn'd!