XXII

Glad was I when I reached the other bank. 
        Now for a better country.  Vain presage! 
        Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 130
Soil to a plash?  Toads in a poisoned tank,
        Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage—­

XXIII

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque. 
        What penned them there, with all the plain to choose? 
        No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it.  Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
           Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

XXIV

And more than that—­a furlong on—­why, there! 
        What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, 140
        Or brake, not wheel—­that harrow fit to reel
Men’s bodies out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet’s tool, on earth left unaware
        Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

XXV

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
        Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
        Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
Changes and off he goes!) within a rood—­
        Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth. 150

XXVI

Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
        Now patches where some leanness of the soil’s
        Broke into moss or substances like boils;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
        Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

XXVII

And just as far as ever from the end! 
        Nought in the distance but the evening, nought
        To point my footstep further!  At the thought
A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom-friend, 160
Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
        That brushed my cap—­perchance the guide I sought.

XXVIII

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
        ’Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
        All round to mountains—­with such name to grace
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view. 
How thus they had surprised me,—­solve it, you! 
        How to get from them was no clearer case.

XXIX

Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick
        Of mischief happened to me, God knows when—­ 170
        In a bad dream perhaps.  Here ended, then,
Progress this way.  When, in the very nick
Of giving up, one time more, came a click
        As when a trap shuts—­you’re inside the den!