Chapter XXIV

Flame-hued and hissing played its nimble tongue
Between thick, ghastly rows of pointed bone
Round which commingled gore and venom clung:
Raging its flattened head like copper shone,
And flinty earth returned a heavy groan
Lashed by quick strokes of its resounding tail;
Heard is like uproar when the hills bleak cone
Is wildly beat by winter's icy flail,
But in that moment dire the archer did not quail.