begin to hold. O my God, how dreadful a sight is this! Lo, the cruel beasts and the horrible faces of devils, and black forshapen things withouten number have environed me, a-spying and abiding my wretched soul — that shall in haste pass out — if peradventure it shall be taken to them for to be tormented, as for her bote.[1]
O thou most righteous Doomsman, how strait and hard be thy dooms; charging[2] and hard deeming me, wretched, in those things the which few folk charge or dread, forasmuch as they seem small and little. Q the dreadful sight of the righteous Justice, that is now present to me by dread, and suddenly to come in deed. Lo, (the) death, swift perishing[3] the members^ is come, that witnesseth the kind[4] of the flesh that perisheth and overcometh the spirit.
Now farewell, fellows and friends most dear: for now in my passing I cast the eyes of my mind into purgatory, whither that I shall now be led, and out thereof I shall not pass till I have yielded the last farthing of my debt for sin. There I behold with the eye of mine heart wretchedness and sorrow, and manifold pain and tormenting. Alas, me wretched! There I see — among other pains that longen to that place — rising up flames of fire, and the souls of wretched folk cast therein; up and down, to and fro, that run as sparks of fire in midst of that burning fire: right as in a great town, all one fire. And in the fire and in the smoke the sparks be borne up and
