Who let themselves mistrust her overmuch
To take the only thing she has to give.
Amid the rags there caracoled fop-penitents whose panders lolled
With human baggage in the rear, and hound and hawk. So chaos rolled
Adown the Danube rolling east. Beyond Semlin the pinewoods filled
With Celt and Saxon, man and beast inspired to leave the west untilled.
The locust-swarms were better drilled than we, the owls were not so blind.
At every stage we left behind poor simpletons that moaned and shrilled,
Thinking each swamp Gethsemane. It seemed that at their agony
The doctors scoffed with cross aloft, reciting magic formulæ.