The Downing legends : Stories in Rhyme :: :: University of Virginia Library

He reached the town at sunset stroke,
And found it bare of christian folk;
For none who dreaded Satan's snares,
Or valued sleep or evening prayers
Would bide within a haunted land
Where Tophet held the upper hand,
Where every night the lanskip shook
With rigadoons of witch and spook,
And even sheriffs stirred their boots
To flight before Apollyon's hoots.

Through desert ways the hero hied,
With silent homes on either side,
Nor creature spied of mortal frame,
Unless perchance a withered dame
Of evil fame for dance and song
At mid of night with Satan's throng.

Anon he won the oaken wood
Where Tophet's mongrel multitude
Rejoiced to waltz the night away
In Reverend Cotton Mather's day.

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Yet there he found but evening dusk,
Perfumed by yellow woodbine musk,
And brightly rayed with argent sheaves
Of moonlight sliding through the leaves.

He tethered horse and paced the shade
With pistol cocked and naked blade;
For hours he wandered to and fro,
Alive to every firefly's glow,
To every hoot of owl, or flight
Of bat or insect through the night;
Hoping at every breath to hear
The hellish anthem storming near;
But watching, harking all in vain
Until a terror filled his brain
Lest Belial's crew had spied him there
And called its congress otherwhere.