Its conflict seized me with raging force
And like a top, with giddy twisting,
Spun me about: there was no resisting!

"Then God did show me, sore beseeching
In deepest, frightfullest need,
Up from the bottom a rock-ledge reaching--
At it I caught, and from death was freed!
And behold, on spiked corals the beaker suspended
Which had else to the very abyss descended!

"For below me it lay yet mountain-deep
The purply darksome maw!
And, though to the ear it was dead asleep,
The ghasted eye, down staring, saw
How, with dragons, lizards, salamanders, crawling,
The hell-jaws horrible were sprawling!

"Black-swarming, in medley miscreate,
In masses lumped hideously,
Wallowed the conger, the thorny skate,
The lobster's grisly deformity;
And, baring its teeth with cruel sheen, a
Terrible shark, the sea's hyena.

"So there I hung, and shuddering knew
That human help was none;
One thinking soul mid the horrid crew,
In the ghastly desert I was alone--
Deeper than human speech e'er sounded,