THE FIVE KISSES
97
Nor even the hellish fire of Etna’s maw.
But lucklessly we came upon a pool
Dank, dark, and stagnant, evil to the touch,
Oozing towards us, but sucked suddenly,
Silently, horribly, by slow compulsion
Into the slipping sand, and vanishing,
Whereon we sawa little boat appear,
And in it such a figure as we knew
Was Death. But she, intolerant of delay,
Hailed him. The vessel floated to our feet,
And Death was not. She leapt within, and
bent
Her own white shoulders to the thwart, and
bade
Me steer, and keep stern waich with sword
unsheathed
For fear of something that her soul had
seen
Above. And thus upon the oily black
Silent swift river we sailed out to reach
Its source, no longer feeling as compelled,
But led by some incomprehensible
Passion. And here lewd fishes snapped
at us,
And watersnakes writhed silently toward
Our craft. But these I fought against, and
smote
Head from foul body, to our further ill,
For frightful jelly-monsters grew apace,
And all the water grew one slimy mass
Of crawling tentacles. My sword was swift
That slashed and slew them, chiefly to protect
The toiling woman, and assure our path
Through this foul hell. And now the very
air
Is thick with cold wet horrors.
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!
By-and-by we woke
In a most beautiful canoe of pearl
Lucent on lucent water, in a sun
VOL. I.
With my
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 Icried: 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 ;
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
Born of our own selves. These, grown
furious
At dispossession by the subtle air,
Contend with us, who know the agony
Of half life drawn out lingering, who groan
Eaten as if by worms, who dash ourselves
Vainly against the ethereal essences
That make our boat, who vainly strive to
cast
Our stricken bodies over the pale edge
And drop and end it all. No nerve obeys ;
But in the torn web of our brains is born
The knowledge that release is higher yet.
So, lightened of the devils that possessed
In myriad hideousness our earthier lives,
With one swift impulse, we ourselves shake
off
The clinging fiends, and shaking even the
boat
As dust beneath our feet, leap up and run
Upward, and flash, and suddenly sigh back
Happy, and rest.with limbs entwined at last
On pale blue air, the empyreal floor,
As on a bank of flowers in the old days
Before this journey. So I think we slept.
But now, awaking, suddenly we feel
A sound as if within us, and without,
So penetrating and so self-inspired
G