Englands Parnassus: or the choysest flowers of our moderne poets, with their poeticall comparisons Descriptions of bewties, personages, castles, pallaces, mountaines, groues, seas, springs, riuers, &c. Whereunto are annexed other various discourses, both pleasaunt and profitable.

Hell.

An hidious hole all vast withouten shape, Of endlesse depth, orewhelm'd with ragged stone: With ougly mouth and grifly iawes doth gape, And to our sight confounds it selfe in one. Here entred we, and yeeding forth anon An horrible loathly lake we might discerne As blacke as pitch, that cleped is Auerne, A deadly gulfe, where nought but rubbish growes, With foule blacke swelth in thickned lumps that lies: Which vp in th'aire such stinking vapour throwes. That ouer, there may fly no fowle but dies, Choakt with th'pestilent sauours that arise. M. Sackuile.

Thence come we to the horror and the hell, The large great kingdomes and the dreadfull raigne, Of Pluto in his throne where he did dwell, The wide waste places and the hugie plaine: The waylings, shrikes, and sundry sorts of paine. The sighes, the sobbes, the deep and deadly grone, Earth, aire, and all resounding plaine and mone. Idem.

Then turning backe, in silence soft they stole, And brought the heauy course with easie pace, To yawning gulfe of deep Auernus hole, And by that same an entrance darke and base, With smoake and Sulphur hiding all the place, Descends to hell, their creature neuer past, That back returned without heauenly grace. But dreadfull furies, which their chaines haue brast, And damned sprights, sent forth to make ill men agast. Ed. Spencer.

—Darksome den of Auernus Wher's no path to returne, nor starting holes to be scaping, Desteny, death, and hell, and howling hidious hell-hound, Loathsom streames of Stix, that nine times compasse Auer∣nu••. Ab. Fraunce.

They passe the bitter waues of Acheron, Where many soules sit wayling wofully: And come to fiery flood of Phlegeton, Whereas the damned ghoasts in torments fry, And with sharpe shrilling shrikes do bootlesse cry: Cursing high Ioue, the which them thither sent. Ed. Spencer.

About the desart parts of Greece there is a vally low, To which the roaring waters fall, that frō the moūtains flow•• So rocks do ouershadow it, that scarse a man may vew The open aire, no sun shines there; amidst this darkesom cre•• Doth stand a citie, to the same belongs one onely gate, But one at once may come therto, the entrance is so strait. Cut out the rough maine stony rocke: this citie did belong To Pluto, and because that he was doing alwaies wrong, And kept a theeuish rable that in mischiefe did excell, His citizens were diuels said, and citie named hell. W. Warner.