LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC.
The toiling woman and assure our path
Through this foul hell. And now the very air
Is thick with cold wet horrors. With my sword
Trenchant, that tore their scaly essences—
Like Lucian’s sailor writhing in the clutch
Of those witch-vines—I slashed about like light,
And noises horrible of death devoured
The hateful suction of their clinging arms
And wash of slipping bellies. Presently
Sense failed, and Nothing!
| Bye-and-bye we woke
In a most beautiful canoe of pearl
Lucent on lucent water, in a sun
That was the heart of spring. But the green land
Seemed distant, with a sense of aery height ;
As if it were below us far, that seemed
Around. And as we gazed the water grew
Ethereal, thin, most delicately hued,
Misty, as if its substance were dissolved
In some more subtle element. We heard
“O passers over water, do ye dare
To tread the deadlier kingdoms of the air?”
. Whereat I cried: Arise! And then the pearl
Budded with nautilus-wings, and upward now
Soared. And our souls began to know the death
That was about to take us. All our veins
Boiled with tumultuous and bursting blood,
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Our flesh broke bounds, and all our bones grew fierce,
As if some poison ate us up. And lo!
The air is peopled with a devil-tribe