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131

V. BENEATH HUNTCLIFF.

I sat amongst the old world's oldest dead,
In halls sepulchral, rifled by the tide;
The horns and bolts of Ammon at my side
Peeped from the pitch-dark clay, and overhead,
Line upon line, were stored in earth, blood-red,
The showers of sling-stones, telling how for pride,
By wrath of Zeus, the huge sea-monsters died,
Who crawled like toads, but wore the gavial's head.
So well had Time, the sexton, covered o'er
The tale of death with reverential hand,
No human eye had known such secrets lurk
Within earth's charnel, but for waves who work
Uninterrupted by the moaning shore,
To dig the grave of all that burial land.
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