Against a castle moated gloomily by a bitter drain of blood, From whose fetid wave contumely Of all truth was reeking fumily And infectiously, I stood;
Waiting for her sign — A shriek repeated nine. I shrank at every aspish quivering fear set crawling in my breast. But betimes I felt a shivering
Shriek cut ear and brain with slivering Stings of terror, sin, unrest — Christ! it raised the dead Out of the moat's black bed.
Nine times — and then across the thickening reek a rusty draw was dropped; Thro portcullis sped a quickening Shadow past to where with sickening Feet, befixed by awe I stopped —
There she laughed a laugh No devil's soul could quaff. I swear its clamor tore the stuttering leaves from shrub and shrunken tree; Swear no limbo e'er heard muttering
Like that spawn of echoes sputtering Midnight with their drunken glee — Yet, ere half were done, I could not hear a one.
She put her finger burning eerily to my lips — I heard them lock. Led me then a marsh-way, cheerily — Tho the quick ooze spurted drearily Thro root-rotten curd and rock.
Things like water-ghouls Slid slimily in pools. She stepped just once upon a hideous burrow, dank and haired with grass; Fixed upon me eyes perfidious
As a fiend's are, yet insidious — Questioned if I dared to pass. “I will search all Hell To find him,” from me fell.
And so was drawn thro dark cadaverous with the sound of gabbling dead. Where we heard them hoot palaverous Drivel learned beneath unsavorous Moulds, and saw a glutton's head
Grin to a hissing bat, That scraped him as he spat. Witch she was, I knew, turned shepherdess to a soul blind as a sheep's. But I dogged her on o'er jeopardous
Steeps down which she sped with leopardess Limbs into miasmic deeps. “Swim,” she gasped behind — Then like a she-wolf whined.
It almost seemed to me as deadening as the sluice of dreary Styx. Fire and foulness mixed with leadening Slush I drank; but swam the reddening Stuff a league with weary licks.
Up a sulphurous bank We climbed, and there I sank. Again she laughed that laugh — a shrivelling, ghastly, gaunt, uncanny spate. Up I sprang and cursed my snivelling
Soul for weariness — for drivelling, And for so forgetting Hate. “You will find him there” She pointed — thro her hair.
I write these words from Hell where bloodily locked with him in fight I woke. Where we fall down caverns ruddily Spilt with glazing gore and muddily
Dashed with stagnant night and smoke. Yet I do not care, For he groans by me — there.
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