Page:Betelguese, a trip through hell.djvu/74

66 And crimsons adders on the hulls,

Search for toadstools smeared with blood.

And livid lamps where vypers spoon,

As some bad harlot shrieks and cries

Her Nature's sins unto three skulls,

A shameless gnome bathes in hell's flood

The thighs he filched from a gray tomb.

Drawn by the whispers from the wind,

'Mid glories of the hollowed night,

To storm-swept vales and mounts we haste,

And, in monastic halls we see,

Above a greenish gyrus rind,

The flick'ring flames of a light,

Beneath whose subtle, shadowed waste

Squat men and women that would flee

The ghastly words from Vellum told,

Who pluck their eyes and pull their hair,— Beneath their feet there writhes a worm! As bludgeons smite a leering soul.

And when a wench that Satan sold