Hideous with horrent looks and goading steel 51 The fiend drives on the abject cowering ghost Where (closed the eighth) sev'n yawning gates reveal The sev'nfold anguish that awaits the Lost; By each the gryphon flaps his ravening wings, And dire Chimaera whets her hungry stings. Here, ev'n that God, of all the kindliest one, 52 Life of all life (in Tusca's later creed Blent with the orient worship of the Sun, Or His who loves the madding nymphs to lead On the Fork'd Hill), abjures his genial smile,[10] And, scowls transform'd, the Typhon of the Nile. Closed the eighth gate--for _there_, the happy dwell! 53 No glimpse of joy beyond makes horror less. But that closed gate upon the exiled hell Sets hell's last seal of misery--Hopelessness! Nathless, despite the Daemon's chasing thong, Here, as if hoping still, the hopeless throng. Before the northern knight each nightmare dream 54 Of Theban soothsayer or Chaldean mage, Thus kindling in the torches' breathless beam, As if incarnate with resistless rage, And hell's true malice, starts from wall to wall; He signs the cross, and looks unmoved on all. Before the inmost Penetralian doors, 55 Holding a cypress-branch, the Augur stands; The King's firm foot strides echoless the floors, And with dull groan the temple veil expands; Slow-moving on the brandish'd torches shine Red o'er the wave that yawns behind the shrine; Red o'er the wave, as, under vaulted rock, 56 Dark as Cocytus, the false smoothness flows; But where the light fades--there is heard the shock As hurrying down the headlong torrent goes; With mocking oars, a raft sways, moor'd beside-- What keel save Charon's ploughs that dismal tide? Proud Arthur smiled upon the guileful host, 57 As welcome danger roused him and restored.-- "Friend," quoth the King, "methinks your streams might boast A gentler margin and a fairer ford!" "As birth to man," replied the priest, "the cave, O guest, to thee! as death to man the wave. "Doth it appal thee? thou canst yet return! 58 There love, there sunny life;--and yonder"--"Fame, Cymri, and God!" said Arthur. "Paynim, learn Death has two victors, deathless both--THE NAME, THE SOUL; to each a realm eternal given, This rules the earth, and that achieves the heaven." He said, and seized a torch with scornful hand; 59 The frail raft rock'd to his descending tread; Upon the prow he fix'd the glowing brand, And the raft drifted down the waves of dread. So with his fortunes went confiding forth The knightly Caesar of the Christian North.