2 The gate, where Fire and Smoke the porters be, Stands always ope with gaping greedy jaws. Hither flocked all the states of misery; As younger snakes, when their old serpent draws Them by a summoning hiss, haste down her throat Of patent poison their awed selves to shoot. 3 The hall was roofed with everlasting pride, Deep paved with despair, checkered with spite, And hanged round with torments far and wide: The front displayed a goodly-dreadful sight, Great Satan's arms stamped on an iron shield, A crowned dragon, gules, in sable field. 4 There on's immortal throne of death they see Their mounted lord; whose left hand proudly held His globe, (for all the world he claims to be His proper realm,) whose bloody right did wield His mace, on which ten thousand serpents knit, With restless madness gnawed themselves and it. 5 His awful horns above his crown did rise, And force his fiends to shrink in theirs: his face Was triply-plated impudence: his eyes Were hell reflected in a double glass, Two comets staring in their bloody stream, Two beacons boiling in their pitch and flame. 6 His mouth in breadth vied with his palace gate And conquered it in soot: his tawny teeth Were ragged grown, by endless gnashing at The dismal riddle of his living death: His grizzly beard a singed confession made What fiery breath through his black lips did trade. 7 Which as he oped, the centre, on whose back His chair of ever-fretting pain was set, Frighted beside itself, began to quake: Throughout all hell the barking hydras shut Their awed mouths: the silent peers, in fear, Hung down their tails, and on their lord did stare. JOSEPH'S DREAM. 1 When this last night had sealed up mine eyes, And opened heaven's, whose countenance now was clear, And trimmed with every star; on his soft wing A nimble vision me did thither bring. 2 Quite through the storehouse of the air I passed Where choice of every weather treasured lies: Here, rain is bottled up; there, hail is cast In candied heaps: here, banks of snow do rise; There, furnaces of lightning burn, and those Long-bearded stars which light us to our woes. 3 Hence towered I to a dainty world: the air Was sweet and calm, and in my memory Waked my serener mother's looks: this fair Canaan now fled from my discerning eye; The earth was shrunk so small, methought I read, By that due prospect, what it was indeed. 4 But then, arriving at an orb whose flames, Like an unbounded ocean, flowed about, Fool as I was, I quaked; till its kind beams Gave me a harmless kiss. I little thought Fire could have been so mild; but surely here It rageth, 'cause we keep it from its sphere.