Page:The roamer and other poems (1920).djvu/80

70 The jungle's births and dragons of the steep

Who made a plash of gore where'er they trod;

And everywhere the adder and the asp

And all the poison-headed snaky swarm

Familiar through the host crawled undisturbed,

And many a stolèd priesthood gave them food.

There puffed the smoke and showered the drifting sparks

Like fiery scales; there geyser-like the spouts

Of random flame thrust up with forking tongues,

As that dark waste were some volcanic quake

And all the heathen race some fiendish crew.

Higher the rout, and still new horror spawned,

And lower bent the abject populace,

Defiled in body and deformed in soul,

Who served the worm with bloody covenants.

Omens and prodigies before them swam,

The shapeless imagery of earth's affright,

Worse worship urging and worse injury:

The fiery breath that from Assyria blew;

The lusts that haunt the buried mouths of Nile;

Shadows that ride the night, visages dire,

Afrites, and that vast airy troop that made

A spectral conquest of imperial Rome,

Thessalian terror; Druid witcheries;

Despairs and ecstasies and tortures maimed