Another part in Squadrons and gross Bands, [ 570 ]
On bold adveo discover wide
That dismal world, if any Clime perhaps
Might yield them easier habitation, bend
Four ways thir flying March, along the Banks
Of four infernal Rivers that disge [ 575 ]
Into the burning Lake thir baleful streams;
Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,
Sad Acheron of sorrow, blad deep;
Cocytus, namd of lamentation loud
Heard on the ruful stream; fierce Phlegeton [ 580 ]
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Farr off from these a slow and silent stream,
Lethe the River of Oblivion roules
Her watrie Labyrinth, whereof who drinks,
Forthwith his former state and being fets, [ 585 ]
Fets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Beyond this flood a frozen ti
Lies dark and wilde, beat with perpetual storms
Of Whirlwind and dire Hail, whi firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems [ 590 ]
Of a pile; all else deep snow and ice,
A gulf profound as that Serbonian Bog
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,
Where Armies whole have sunk: the parg Air
Burns frore, and cold performs th effect of Fire. [ 595 ]
Thither by harpy-footed Furies haild,
At certain revolutions all the damnd
Are brought: and feel by turns the bitter ge
Of fierce extreams, extreams by ge more fierce,
From Beds ing Fire to starve in Ice [ 600 ]
Thir soft Ethereal warmth, and there to pine
Immovable, infixt, and frozen round,
Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.
They ferry over this Lethean Sound
Both to and fro, thir sorrow to augment, [ 605 ]
And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach
The tempting stream, with one small drop to loose
I fetfulness all pain and woe,
All in one moment, and so he brink;
But fate withstands, and to oppose th attempt [ 610 ]
Medusa with Gonian terruards
The Ford, and of it self the water flies
All taste of living wight, as o fled
The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on
In fusd march forlorn, th adventrous Bands [ 615 ]
With shuddring horror pale, and eyes agast
Viewd first thir lamentable lot, and found
: through many a dark and drearie Vaile
They passd, and many a Region dolorous,
Oer many a Frozen, many a fierie Alpe, [ 620 ]
Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of death,
A Universe of death, which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good,
Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, [ 625 ]
Abominable, inutterable, and worse
Then Fables yet have feignd, or fear ceivd,
Gons and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.