We are the damned - the strain and moil That death had washed from earthly toil Drawn down by tides of hell, we boil Like toads within a torrid slime. Our sins were great - a deadly charge And yet less heavy than our fate We pour through hell's alembic large Each soul transformed to vital hate The good that in our hearts remained By sin untainted, now is one With vileness cankeringly ingrained By earth and hell we stand undone. For that which earth unfinished left the consummation of the pit from out the insuperable cleft to where its lords presiding sit. And watch with contestless sight we burn, by double test refined to clearest evil - purged quite of good or mercy from the mind. Our souls are linked to vast despair as to some nadir-founded rock where never hope descends to mock beyond the dip of terrene air. We heighten to a hate that beats in rage all impotently strong against the worlds that league with wrong whose pain each other's pain completes. Would our gate were hands to draw the lords of earth and hell beneath! Would our hate were venomed teeth to rend them through their mail of law! Would that we might cleave with hate the roof and base, and walls of hell wrench at its pillars till they fell with ruin indiscriminate! Immovable it stands, with springs of fire to tear its inward glooms where from, ascending high, our fumes are breath of incense to its kings.