I that have wasted, months, weeks, days, and hours In viewing kingdoms, countries, towns, and towers, Without all measure, measuring many paces, And with my pen describing many places, With few additions of mine own devising, (Because I have a smack of _Coryatizing_[16]) Our _Mandeville_, _Primaleon_, _Don Quixote_, Great _Amadis_, or _Huon_, travelled not As I have done, or been where I have been, Or heard and seen, what I have heard and seen; Nor Britain's _Odcombe_ (_Zany_ brave _Ulysses_) In all his ambling, saw the like as this is. I was in (would I could describe it well) A dark, light, pleasant, profitable hell, And as by water I was wafted in, I thought that I in _Charon's_ boat had been, But being at the entrance landed thus, Three men there (instead of _Cerberus_) Convey'd me in, in each one hand a light To guide us in that vault of endless night, There young and old with glim'ring candles burning Dig, delve, and labour, turning and returning, Some in a hole with baskets and with bags, Resembling furies, or infernal hags: There one like _Tantalus_ feeding, and there one, Like _Sisyphus_ he rolls the restless stone. Yet all I saw was pleasure mixed with profit, Which proved it to be no tormenting Tophet[17] For in this honest, worthy, harmless hell, There ne'er did any damned Devil dwell; And th' owner of it gains by 't more true glory, Than _Rome_ doth by fantastic Purgatory. A long mile thus I passed, down, down, steep, steep, In deepness far more deep, than _Neptunes_ deep, Whilst o'er my head (in fourfold stories high) Was earth, and sea, and air, and sun, and sky: That had I died in that _Cimmerian_[18] room, Four elements had covered o'er my tomb: Thus farther than the bottom did I go, (And many Englishmen have not done so;) Where mounting porpoises, and mountain whales, And regiments of fish with fins and scales, 'Twixt me and heaven did freely glide and slide, And where great ships may at an anchor ride: Thus in by sea, and out by land I past, And took my leave of good Sir _George_ at last.