HELL.
1 Hell's court is built deep in a gloomy vale,
High walled with strong damnation, moated round
With flaming brimstone: full against the hall
Roars a burnt bridge of brass: the yards abound
With all envenomed herbs and trees, more rank
And fruitless than on Asphaltite's bank.
2 The gate, where Fire and Smoke the porters be,
Stands always ope with gaping greedy jaws.
Hither flocked all the states of misery;
As younger snakes, when their old serpent draws
Them by a summoning hiss, haste down her throat
Of patent poison their awed selves to shoot.
3 The hall was roofed with everlasting pride,
Deep paved with despair, checkered with spite,
And hanged round with torments far and wide:
The front displayed a goodly-dreadful sight,
Great Satan's arms stamped on an iron shield,
A crowned dragon, gules, in sable field.
4 There on's immortal throne of death they see
Their mounted lord; whose left hand proudly held
His globe, (for all the world he claims to be
His proper realm,) whose bloody right did wield
His mace, on which ten thousand serpents knit,
With restless madness gnawed themselves and it.
5 His awful horns above his crown did rise,
And force his fiends to shrink in theirs: his face
Was triply-plated impudence: his eyes
Were hell reflected in a double glass,
Two comets staring in their bloody stream,
Two beacons boiling in their pitch and flame.
6 His mouth in breadth vied with his palace gate
And conquered it in soot: his tawny teeth
Were ragged grown, by endless gnashing at
The dismal riddle of his living death:
His grizzly beard a singed confession made
What fiery breath through his black lips did trade.
7 Which as he oped, the centre, on whose back
His chair of ever-fretting pain was set,
Frighted beside itself, began to quake:
Throughout all hell the barking hydras shut
Their awed mouths: the silent peers, in fear,
Hung down their tails, and on their lord did stare.