Went wailing as if mourning some lost land
Of perished empire, Babylon or Tyre.


XV


Long, long with blistered feet we wandered in
That land of ruins, through whose sky of brass
Hate's Harpy shrieked; and in whose iron grass
The Hydra hissed of undestroyable Sin.


XVI


And there at last, behold, the House of Doom,--
Red, as if Hell had glared it into life,
Blood-red, and howling with incessant strife,--
With burning battlements, towered in the gloom.


XVII


And throned within sat Darkness.--Who might gaze
Upon that form, that threatening presence there,
Crowned with the flickering corpse-lights of Despair,
And yet escape sans madness and amaze?