Close packed with those wretches who’d ruin your Nation.”

And soon, as we stood o’er a precipice dire,

I saw far beneath me the great Lake of Fire;

Like the sea in a tempest its surface was tossed,

While it swarmed with the pale, burning ghosts of the lost.

Rock-bounded on all sides, the deep, hollow roar

Of its surges resounded while lashing the shore,

The blackness of darkness—a sulphurous cloud,

Hung over the scene like a funeral shroud.

Yet plain by the glare of the red waves at play,