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By their free choice, and immemorial
Usage; though Rumour murmurs her wild tale
Ever with a light head confusedly.

⁠Shall I behold some dark terrific cave,
Reeking with bats, and owls, and doleful things,
High among crags of a precipitous mountain,
Strewn with fresh bones of men, that hideous ghouls
In human form, foul anthropophagi,
Have gnawn for food; a loathsome den defiled
With dripping human members, torn for meat?
A desolate wind howls ever dolefully
Around the dismal open mouth of hell,
Howls like a murdered man's avenging soul!
While among boulder-ruins of the mountain
Climb beasts obscene, scenting a horrid feast!
At night a thunder of great lions rolls,
Rebellowing from basalt precipices:
At night a fervour of infernal flame,
With cruel yells of hellish revelry,
Affronts pale stars; what time the unearthly fiends
Grimy, and gash'd with knives, and foul with earth,