There the foul, earliest reptile spectra lay,38
Distinct as when the chaos was their home;
Half plant, half serpent, some subside away
Into gnarl'd roots (now stone)—more hideous some,
Half bird—half fish—seem struggling yet to spring,
Shark-like the maw, and dragon-like the wing.
But, life-like more, from later layers emerge39
With their fell tusks deep-stricken in the stone,
Herds,[4] that through all the thunders of the surge,
Had to the Ark which swept relentless on
(Denied to them)—knell'd the despairing roar
Of sentenced races time shall know no more.
Under the limbs of mammoths went the path,40
Or through the arch immense of Dragon jaws,
And ever on the King, in watchful wrath,
Gazed the attendant Fiend, with artful pause
Where dread was deadliest; had the mortal one
Falter'd or quail'd, the Fiend his prey had won,
And rent it limb by limb; but on the Dove41
Arthur look'd steadfast, and the Fiend was foil'd.
Now, as along the skeleton world they move,
Strange noises jar, and flit strange shadows. Toil'd
The Troll's[5] swart people, in their inmost home
At work on ruin for the days to come.
A baleful race, whose anvils forge the flash42
Of iron murder for the limbs of war;
Who ripen hostile embryos, for the crash
Of earthquakes rolling slow to towers afar;
Or train from Hecla's fount the lurid rills,
To cities sleeping under shepherd hills;
Or nurse the seeds, through patient ages rife43
With the full harvest of that crowning fire,
When for the sentenced Three—Time, Death, and Life—
Our globe itself shall be the funeral pyre;
And, awed, in orbs remote some race unknown
Shall miss one star, whose smile had lit their own!
Through the Phlegræan glare, innumerous eyes,44
Fierce with the murther-lust, scowl ravening,
And forms on which had never look'd the skies
Stalk near and nearer, swooping round the King,
Till from the blazing sword the foul array
Shrink back, and wolf-like follow on the way.
Now through waste mines of iron, whose black peaks45
Frown o'er dull Phlegethons of fire below,
While, vague as worlds unform'd, sulphureous reeks
Roll on before them huge and dun,—they go.
Abrupt the vapours vanish, and the light
Bursts like a flood and rushes o'er the night.
A mighty cirque with lustre belts the mine;46
Its walls of iron glittering into steel;
Wall upon wall reflected flings the shrine
Of armour! Vizorless the Corpses kneel,
Their glazed eyes fix'd upon a couch where, screen'd
With whispering curtains, sleeps the Kingly Fiend:
Corpses of giants, who perchance had heard47
The tromps of Tubal, and had leapt to strife
Whose guilt provoked the Deluge: sepulchred
In their world's ruins, still a frown like life
Hung o'er vast brows,—and spears like turrets shone
In hands whose grasp had crush'd the Mastodon.