No! penury, inertness, and grimace,
  In some strange sort, were the land’s portion.  “See
  Or shut your eyes,” said Nature peevishly,
“It nothing skills:  I cannot help my case: 
’Tis the Last Judgment’s fire must cure this place,
  Calcine its clods and set my prisoners deg. free.” deg.66

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
  Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents deg. deg.68
  Were jealous else.  What made those holes and rents
In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruised as deg. to balk 70
All hope of greenness? ’tis a brute must walk
  Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
  In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
  Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. 
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there: 
  Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud!

Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
  With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, 80
  And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
  He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart. 
  As a man calls for wine before he fights,
  I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. 
Think first, fight afterwards—­the soldier’s art: 
  One taste of the old time sets all to rights. 90

Not it deg.!  I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening face deg.91
  Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
  Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm in mine to fix me to the place,
That way he used.  Alas, one night’s disgrace! 
  Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold.

Giles then, the soul of honour—­there he stands
  Frank as ten years ago when knighted first. 
  What honest man should dare (he said) he durst. 
Good—­but the scene shifts—­faugh! what hangman hands 100
Pin to his breast a parchment?  His own bands
  Read it.  Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

Better this present than a past like that;
  Back therefore to my darkening path again! 
  No sound, no sight so far as eye could strain. 
Will the night send a howlet deg. or a bat? deg.106
I asked:  when something on the dismal flat
  Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

A sudden little river crossed my path
  As unexpected as a serpent comes. 110
  No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
For the fiend’s glowing hoof—­to see the wrath
  Of its black eddy bespate deg. with flakes and spumes. deg.114