And the Serpent replied:
Ruby lip! poison tooth!
We are hungry for a youth.
She grasped another that writhed in her fingers like liquid emerald, and cried:
Treble-tongue and throat of glue!
How to know the one that's due?
And the Serpent replied:
Breast of snow! baleful bliss!
He that wooing wins a kiss.
She clutched one at her elbow, a hairy serpent with yellow languid eyes in flame-sockets and livid-lustrous length—a disease to look on, and cried:
Treble-tongue and throat of gall!
There's a youth beneath the pall.
And the Serpent replied:
Brilliant eye! bloody tear!
He has fed us for a year.
She squeezed that hairy serpent till her finger-points whitened in his neck, and he dropped lifelessly, crying:
Treble-tongues and things of mud!
Sprang my beauty from his blood?
And the Serpents rose erect, replying:
Yearly one of us must die;
Yearly for us dieth one;
Else the Queen an ugly lie
Lives till all our lives be done!
