deepundergroundpoetry.com

< Lament >

         DEMETRIUS:
         How now, dear sovereign, and our gracious mother!
         Why doth your highness look so pale and wan?

         TAMORA:
         Have I not reason, think you, to look pale?
         These two have 'ticed me hither to this place:
         A barren detested vale, you see it is;
         The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,
         O'ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe:
         Here never shines the sun; here nothing breeds,
         Unless the nightly owl or fatal raven:
         And when they show'd me this abhorred pit,
         They told me, here, at dead time of the night,
         A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,
         Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,
         Would make such fearful and confused cries
         As any mortal body hearing it
         Should straight fall mad, or else die suddenly.
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   (from Titus Andronicus, Act II, scene III)
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   < Lament >

  Back home (well, take your pick) the toads are green,
  While here they're more the color of a brick.

  The snakes though, here as there, are sullied black;
  And as they hiss, impossible to miss.

   - - -

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