XVII.

Night falls around--in dark and dense defile Nial and Morton with their gallant host, Where even by daylight rarest sunbeams smile, In Leron’s frightful wilderness are lost. By frowning precipice, through crags high-tost By earthquakes old--through forests grimly black, Like ghosts they wandered, crost and then re-crost, Nor pathway saw to forward move or back, Nor means of exit found, nor even a desert-track.