Giles then, the soul of honor--there he stands Frank as ten years ago when knighted first. What honest man should dare (he said) he durst. Good--but the scene shifts--faugh! what hangman hands 100 Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and cursed! Better this present than a past like that; Back therefore to my darkening path again! No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain. 105 Will the night send a howlet or a bat? I asked; when something on the dismal flat Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train. A sudden little river crossed my path As unexpected as a serpent comes. 110 No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath For the fiend's glowing hoof--to see the wrath Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes. So petty yet so spiteful! All along, 115 Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it; Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit Of mute despair, a suicidal throng; The river which had done them all the wrong, Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit. 120 Which, while I forded--good saints, how I feared To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek, Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard! It may have been a water-rat I speared, 125 But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek. Glad was I when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 130 Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage-- The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque. What penned them there, with all the plain to choose? No footprint leading to that horrid mews, 135 None out of it. Mad brewage set to work Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews. And more than that--a furlong on--why, there! What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, 140 Or brake, not wheel--that harrow fit to reel Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware, Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel. Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood, 145 Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth Desperate and done with--so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes and off he goes!--within a rood, Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth. 150