Page:Tale of Paraguay - Southey.djvu/127

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Even when the spirit to that secret wood Return'd, slow Mondai's silent stream beside, No longer there it found the solitude Which late it left: strange faces were descried, Voices, and sounds of music far and wide, And buildings seem'd to tower amid the trees, And forms of men and beasts on every side, As ever-wakeful fancy hears and sees, All things that it had heard, and seen, and more than these.

For in their sleep strange forms deform'd they saw Of frightful fiends, their ghostly enemies: And souls who must abide the rigorous law Weltering in fire, and there, with dolorous cries Blaspheming roll around their hopeless eyes; And those who doom'd a shorter term to bear In penal flames, look upward to the skies, Seeking and finding consolation there, And feel, like dew from Heaven, the precious aid of prayer.