3 For while they thought that they were unseen in their secret sins, They were sundered one from another by a dark curtain of forgetfulness, Stricken with terrible awe, and sore troubled by spectral forms.
4 For neither did the dark recesses that held them guard them from fears, But sounds rushing down rang around them, And phantoms appeared, cheerless with unsmiling faces.
5 And no force of fire prevailed to give them light, Neither were the brightest flames of the stars strong enough to illumine that gloomy night:
6 But only there appeared to them the glimmering of a fire self-kindled, full of fear; And in terror they deemed the things which they saw To be worse than that sight, on which they could not gaze.
7 And they lay helpless, made the sport of magic are, And a shameful rebuke of their vaunts of understanding:
8 For they that promised to drive away terrors and troublings from a sick soul, These were themselves sick with a ludicrous fearfulness:
9 For even if no troublous thing affrighted them, Yet, scared with the creepings of vermin and hissings of serpents,