ketsful it poured--
Jason, lost on Colchis bleak,
Suffered no such shower-bath!

"Six-and-thirty kings I'll give
Just for one umbrella now!"
So I cried. Umbrella none
Was I offered in that flood.

Weary unto death and glum,
Wet as drowned rats, we came
Back unto the witch's hut
In the middle of the night.

There beside the glowing hearth
Sat Uraka with a comb,
Toiling o'er her swollen pug;--
Him she quickly flung aside

As we entered. First my couch
She prepared, then bent to loose
From my feet the _espardillos_,--
Footgear comfortless and rude!

Helped me to disrobe,--she drew
Off my pantaloons which clung
To my legs as close and tight
As the friendship of a fool.

"Oh, a dressing-gown! I'd give
Six-and-thirty kings," I cried,
"For a dry one!"--as my shirt,
Wringing wet, began to steam.

Shivering, with chattering teeth,
There I stood beside the hearth,
Till the fire drowsed me quite,
Then upon the straw I sank.

Sleepless but with blinking eyes
Peered I at the witch who crouched
By the fire with her son's
Body spread upon her lap.

Upright at her side the pug
Stood, and in his clumsy paws,
Very cleverly and tight,
Held aloft a little jar.

From this did Uraka take
Reddish fat and salved therewith
Swift Lascaro's ribs and breast
With her thin and trembling hands.

And she hummed a lullaby
In a high and nasal tone
As she rubbed him with the salve
'Midst the crackling of the fire.

Sere and bony like a corpse
Lay the son upon the lap
Of his mother; opened wide
Stared his pale and tragic eyes.

Is he really dead, this man?
Kept alive by mother-love?
Nightly by the witch-fat potent
Salved into a magic life?

Oh, that strange, strange fever-sleep!
In which all my limbs grew stiff
As if fettered, yet each sense,
Overwrought, waked horribly!

How that smell of hellish herbs
Plagued me! Musing in my woe,
Long I thought where had I once
Smelled such odours?--but in vain.

How the wind within the flue
Wrought me terror! Like the sobs
Of some parched soul it rang--
Or some well-remembered voice!

But these stuffed birds standing guard
On a board abo