43. 
Since she had food:—­therefore I did awaken
The Tartar steed, who, from his ebon mane
Soon as the clinging slumbers he had shaken, 2715
Bent his thin head to seek the brazen rein,
Following me obediently; with pain
Of heart, so deep and dread, that one caress,
When lips and heart refuse to part again
Till they have told their fill, could scarce express 2720
The anguish of her mute and fearful tenderness,

44. 
Cythna beheld me part, as I bestrode
That willing steed—­the tempest and the night,
Which gave my path its safety as I rode
Down the ravine of rocks, did soon unite 2725
The darkness and the tumult of their might
Borne on all winds.—­Far through the streaming rain
Floating at intervals the garments white
Of Cythna gleamed, and her voice once again
Came to me on the gust, and soon I reached the plain. 2730

45. 
I dreaded not the tempest, nor did he
Who bore me, but his eyeballs wide and red
Turned on the lightning’s cleft exultingly;
And when the earth beneath his tameless tread,
Shook with the sullen thunder, he would spread 2735
His nostrils to the blast, and joyously
Mock the fierce peal with neighings;—­thus we sped
O’er the lit plain, and soon I could descry
Where Death and Fire had gorged the spoil of victory.

46. 
There was a desolate village in a wood 2740
Whose bloom-inwoven leaves now scattering fed
The hungry storm; it was a place of blood,
A heap of hearthless walls;—­the flames were dead
Within those dwellings now,—­the life had fled
From all those corpses now,—­but the wide sky 2745
Flooded with lightning was ribbed overhead
By the black rafters, and around did lie
Women, and babes, and men, slaughtered confusedly.

47. 
Beside the fountain in the market-place
Dismounting, I beheld those corpses stare 2750
With horny eyes upon each other’s face,
And on the earth and on the vacant air,
And upon me, close to the waters where
I stooped to slake my thirst;—­I shrank to taste,
For the salt bitterness of blood was there; 2755
But tied the steed beside, and sought in haste
If any yet survived amid that ghastly waste.

48. 
No living thing was there beside one woman,
Whom I found wandering in the streets, and she
Was withered from a likeness of aught human 2760
Into a fiend, by some strange misery: 
Soon as she heard my steps she leaped on me,
And glued her burning lips to mine, and laughed
With a loud, long, and frantic laugh of glee,
And cried, ’Now, Mortal, thou hast deeply quaffed 2765
The Plague’s blue kisses—­soon millions shall pledge the draught!