The Spirit gripped him by the hair, and sun by sun they fell Till they came to the belt of Naughty Stars that rim the mouth of Hell: The first are red with pride and wrath, the next are white with pain, But the third are black with clinkered sin that cannot burn again: They may hold their path, they may leave their path, with never a soul to mark, They may burn or freeze, but they must not cease in the Scorn of the Outer Dark. The Wind that blows between the worlds, it nipped him to the bone, And he yearned to the flare of Hell-Gate there as the light of his own hearth-stone. The Devil he sat behind the bars, where the desperate legions drew, But he caught the hasting Tomlinson and would not let him through. “Wot ye the price of good pit-coal that I must pay?” said he, “That ye rank yoursel' so fit for Hell and ask no leave of me? I am all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that ye should give me scorn, For I strove with God for your First Father the day that he was born. Sit down, sit down upon the slag, and answer loud and high The harm that ye did to the Sons of Men or ever you came to die.” And Tomlinson looked up and up, and saw against the night The belly of a tortured star blood-red in Hell-Mouth light; And Tomlinson looked down and down, and saw beneath his feet The frontlet of a tortured star milk-white in Hell-Mouth heat. “O I had a love on earth,” said he, “that kissed me to my fall, And if ye would call my love to me I know she would answer all.” -- “All that ye did in love forbid it shall be written fair, But now ye wait at Hell-Mouth Gate and not in Berkeley Square: Though we whistled your love from her bed to-night, I trow she would not run, For the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one!” The Wind that blows between the worlds, it cut him like a knife, And Tomlinson took up the tale and spoke of his sin in life: -- “Once I ha' laughed at the power of Love and twice at the grip of the Grave, And thrice I ha' patted my God on the head that men might call me brave.” The Devil he blew on a brandered soul and set it aside to cool: -- “Do ye think I would waste my good pit-coal on the hide of a brain-sick fool? I see no worth in the hobnailed mirth or the jolthead jest ye did That I should waken my gentlemen that are sleeping three on a grid.” Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and there was little grace, For Hell-Gate filled the houseless Soul with the Fear of Naked Space. “Nay, this I ha' heard,” quo' Tomlinson, “and this was noised abroad, And this I ha' got from a Belgian book on the word of a dead French lord.” -- “Ye ha' heard, ye ha' read, ye ha' got, good lack! and the tale begins afresh -- Have ye sinned one sin for the pride o' the eye or the sinful lust of the flesh?” Then Tomlinson he gripped the bars and yammered, “Let me in -- For I mind that I borrowed my neighbour's wife to sin the deadly sin.”