The Judgement of the Flood :: :: University of Virginia Library

Ignorant of what was in the womb of Time,
And unbelieving of prophetic Truth;
Within the palace-chamber deep-retired,
Mystic commune with Hherem, summoned there,
The royal Amazarah now maintains:
How to descend to Hades; place of Fear,
Not Hope. Soon they into the State unseen,

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Pass in the power of spells. At once, the gates
Of the Abyss display the horrid gorge,
Profound, and undefined; like winter's rack,
Unfolding from the vent. Down—down, descend
The guilty pair; undaunted with the way,
But trembling with impatient sympathy.
Dark—dark that central path, which low, and lower,
Guides to the prison of the lowest gulf.
No light: till grows the accustomed eye to love
That palpable obscure, and from itself
The ray creates, which the dead mass of things
Apparent makes to its instinctive sense;
And, by that radiance strange, they now discern
The Temple of the Fiends—a gorgeous dome,
Gorgeous with horrour, mockery of the Mount
Of Vision in the Heaven. The veil is drawn,
Expectant of her visit; and, behold,
The Demon-Cherubim, whose meeting wings
O'ershadow there the Ark of Blasphemy,
Enthroning Satan on its seat of Wrath;
Whence curses roll in thunder—earthquakes—storms,
The Sanctuary of Hell; and at the shrine,
In festal terrours stands a priestly fiend,
Two seething censers pouring from his hand
Religious maledictions to the King
Of unrepealed perdition. Silence now
Awaiting the response; no longer roars
Or blast, or billow. Straight is seized the hand
Of Amazarah; and upon the Ark
Hherem, with sudden rapture, it hath placed.
‘Swear!’—And she swore, an oath ineffable.
Then rush the winds to battle, and fan wide
The Tablets of mysterious Destiny,
Set in the bosom of the priestly fiend,
Urim, and Thummim. With the sound aroused,
Uplooking, she hath read the covenant

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Whereto her soul is bound. O, bloody terms:
And from her kneeling posture up she starts,
With one strong wrench of agony matern:
—And lo, before her Samiasa stands.
She shrieks, and on the palace-floor she falls,
Even at his feet she falls, and there she lies;
There prostrate at his feet, even where she fell,
Not dead, but speechless, Amazarah lies;
At her Son's feet, fallen speechless, but not dead,
The Queen lies prostrate on that palace-floor.