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

However fair to fiendish sprites
That magic valley may have been,
It gloomed to Downing's troubled een
The horriblest of earthly sights.
On every side the horizon
Was half a league above his head;
The welkin was an azure thread
'Twixt dizzy walls of jagged stone.
He saw no blooming, verdant thing,
Nor any beast, nor any bird;
That woful torrent never heard
The heavenly sound of song or wing.

The lanskip seemed a part of Hell,
Except that smoke and flame had failed;
You marveled why no demon sailed
With shrieks along the fearful dell.
It had a countenance like sin,
It had a countenance like death;
The gazer almost lost his breath
To think that he was caged therein.

102

It bosomed many monstrous seats
Of ruin, marvelous in form;
And every one upheld a swarm
Of stony goblins and afreets.

Yea, every cyclopean hold,
Keep, turret, castle, knightly pile,
Pagoda, temple, altar, aisle,
Was browed with devils manifold.
From every face and front and height
The surly horrors glared adown,
Some forward leaned with spiteful frown,
Some starting back in hideous fright.
On every flinty lip a curse
Of ghoulish hate was petrified,
As though malignantly they died,
Impenitent, for aye perverse.
Words cannot tell how fierce they were,
Nor how their horror filled the place;
It seemed that never hope of grace
Might visit him who wandered there.