HERBERT TRENCH
But the tower proved empty. By the lightning's ray
They found no human ringer in the room. . . .
The bell-rope quivered out in the sea-spume. . . .
3
A creature fierce, soft, witless of itself,
A morbid mouth, circled by writhing arms.
By its own grasp entangled on that shelf.
Had dragged the rope and spread the death-alarms;
Insensitive, light-forgotten, up from slime,
From shelter betwixt rocks, issuing for prey
Disguised, had used man's language of dismay.
The spawn of perished times had late in time
Emerged, and griefs upon man's grief imposed
Incalculable.
But the fishers closed
The blind mouth, and cut off the suckers cold.
Two thousand fathoms the disturber rolled
From trough to trough into the gulf Tyrrhene;
And fear sank with it back into its night obscene.
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