Gargoyles Being Strangely Wrought Images of Life and Death

TO LOLA BENTROVATA.Go sunnily through my garden of flowers, dear maiden o' mine, and once in a while you shall come upon some grotesque Chinese dragon with huge and hideous eyes leering round the delight of the daffodils; or it may be some rude Priapus looking over the calm rock-shadowed beauty of the lake; or even, hanging amid the glory of elm or beech, an human skeleton, whose bones shall rattle in the breeze, and from whose eyeless sockets shall glare-?-I dare not bid you guess what evil knowledge.