Between the two the Death-god broods sublime;48
On his pale brow the inexorable peace
Which speaks of power beyond the shores of time;
Calm, not benign like the sweet gods of Greece,—
Calm as the mystery which in Memphian skies
Froze life's warm current from a sphinx's eyes.
With many a grausame shape unutterable,49
Limn'd were the cavernous sepulchral walls;
Life-like they stalk'd, the Populace of Hell,
Through the pale pomp of Acherontian halls;
Distinct as when the Trojan's living breath
Vex'd the wide silence in the wastes of death.
Shown was the Progress of the guilty Soul50
From earth's warm threshold to the throne of doom;
Here the black genius to the dismal goal
Dragg'd the wan spectre from the unshelt'ring tomb;
While from the side it never more may warn
The better angel, sorrowing, fled forlorn.
Hideous with horrent looks and goading steel51
The fiend drives on the abject cowering ghost
Where (closed the eighth) sev'n yawning gates reveal
The sev'nfold anguish that awaits the Lost;
By each the gryphon flaps his ravening wings,
And dire Chimæra whets her hungry stings.
Here, ev'n that God, of all the kindliest one,52
Life of all life (in Tusca's later creed
Blent with the orient worship of the Sun,
Or His who loves the madding nymphs to lead
On the Fork'd Hill), abjures his genial smile,[10]
And, scowls transform'd, the Typhon of the Nile.
Closed the eighth gate—for there, the happy dwell!53
No glimpse of joy beyond makes horror less.
But that closed gate upon the exiled hell
Sets hell's last seal of misery—Hopelessness!
Nathless, despite the Dæmon's chasing thong,
Here, as if hoping still, the hopeless throng.
Before the northern knight each nightmare dream54
Of Theban soothsayer or Chaldean mage,
Thus kindling in the torches' breathless beam,
As if incarnate with resistless rage,
And hell's true malice, starts from wall to wall;
He signs the cross, and looks unmoved on all.
Before the inmost Penetralian doors,55
Holding a cypress-branch, the Augur stands;
The King's firm foot strides echoless the floors,
And with dull groan the temple veil expands;
Slow-moving on the brandish'd torches shine
Red o'er the wave that yawns behind the shrine;
Red o'er the wave, as, under vaulted rock,56
Dark as Cocytus, the false smoothness flows;
But where the light fades—there is heard the shock
As hurrying down the headlong torrent goes;
With mocking oars, a raft sways, moor'd beside—
What keel save Charon's ploughs that dismal tide?
Proud Arthur smiled upon the guileful host,57
As welcome danger roused him and restored.—
"Friend," quoth the King, "methinks your streams might boast
A gentler margin and a fairer ford!"
"As birth to man," replied the priest, "the cave,
O guest, to thee! as death to man the wave.