Flowed round her lovely feet a stream of blood,

New reeking monsters reeled in at the door.

Hell glared i’ their drunken glance. An instant more,

And Honour’s soul had perished. In their eyes

She reads her doom. A fiend through slippery gore

Advanced—in front the casement open lies.

She leaps—Archangels weep at Virtue’s sacrifice!


HISTORICAL AND ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES TO CANTO VIII.