Page:Keats - Poetical Works, DeWolfe, 1884.djvu/100

88

That out I ran and searched the forest o'er. Wandering about in pine and cedar gloom Damp awe assail'd me, for there 'gan to boom A sound of moan, an agony of sound, Sepulchral from the distance all around. Then came a conquering earth-thunder, and rumbled That fierce complain to silence: while I stumbled Down a precipitous path, as if impell'd. I came to a dark valley.—Groanings swell'd Poisonous about my ears, and louder grew, The nearer I approach'd a flame's gaunt blue, That glared before me through a thorny brake. This fire, like the eye of gordian snake, Bewitch'd me towards: and I soon was near A sight too fearful for the feel of fear: In thicket hid I cursed the haggard scene— The banquet of my arms, my arbor queen, Seated upon an uptorn forest root; And all around her shapes, wizard and brute, Laughing, and wailing, grovelling, serpenting, Showing tooth, tusk, and venom-bag, and sting. O such deformities! old Charon's self. Should he give up awhile his penny pelf, And take a dream 'mong rushes Stygian, It could not be so fantasied. Fierce, wan, And tyrannizing was the lady's look, As over them a gnarled staff she shook. Oft-times upon the sudden she laugh'd out, And from a basket emptied to the rout Clusters of grapes, the which they raven'd quick And roar'd for more; with many a hungry lick About their shaggy jaws. Avenging, slow,