also a more complex and in places obscure string tracing the outline , with some ‘ forks ’ in its path . Even as the Bull contests with the Lion , the text out of which it is made concedes in the Bull ’ s own voice its defeat .
But there remain some puzzling features of the text as a whole , and the anonymous poet ’ s reach may have exceeded his grasp . There is some grammatical solecism , and the translation is in places an ‘ improving ’ one . What , if any , metre is being attempted is uncertain , although the Lion starts out with nearly a hexameter and two pentameters . The Bull seems even more unstable in this respect than the Lion — which may after all be appropriate to the polemical assumption of the whole poem .
Superscription Ballam te bullam : literally ‘ a ball for a bull ’: this is a pun on ‘ bulla ’ ( papal bull ) and the non-classical ‘ balla ’ ( cannonball , shot ), but the author should have used ‘ tibi ’ rather than ‘ te ’.
Lion pedes leonis : this runs up the front of the left forepaw of the Lion , but seems grammatically irrelevant ; the sense is better if we jump from ‘ colluctat ’ ( itself a slightly uncertain reading ) to ‘ satietur ’.
illa cornua : ‘ horns ’ here is meant also in the sense of the horns of the victim of an adulterer : the Pope is not celibate , it is implied , and neither are his cardinals .
in Palatio : something of a pun , referring both to the Palatine hill in Rome and to the palace of the Pope .
Bull pectus … Leo Britanniae : this whole string is repetitive and ambiguous .
Poem 18 from the 1618 collection on the visit of Prince Charles ( Bodleian , MS Tanner 466 , section 2 .)
18 . Sword ( Anonymous ), p . 66 This poem celebrates the visit of Prince Charles to Winchester in 1618 . The chronogram , whose bold letters are also numerals which add up to 1618 , and the introductory elegiac couplet , half of which is lifted straight from
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