‘Twas at a nameless hour of night

When fancies in delirious flight

About the silent sleeper reel

And thro’ his mindless visions steal;

When flesh upon its earthly bed

Sprawls corpse-like and untenanted—

Vacant of soul, which freely flies

Thro’ worlds unknown to waking eyes.

The horned moon above the spire

With ghastly grace was crawling high’r,

And in the pallid struggling beams

Grinn’d memories of ancient dreams.

Aloft in heav’n each starry sign

Flicker’d fantastic and malign,

Whilst voices from the gaping deep

Bade me assuage my woes in sleep.

This scene, one night in chill November,

I shall thro’ many a year remember.

Beneath another moon I espy’d

A bleak and barren countryside,

Where spectral shadows darkly crept

O’er moorland mounds where dead things slept.

The beck’ning moonlight wanly play’d

On forms unusual and ill-made,

Aerial forms from strange dominions,

Hither and thither borne on pinions

That flutter’d as in fev’rish quest

Of some far land of light and rest.

In this dark throng my sight could trace

Beings from all ethereal space;

A sentient chaos gather’d here

From ev’ry immemorial sphere,

Yet of one mind, with ardour rife

To find the Eidolon call’d Life.

The murky moon, a daemon eye

Drunkenly winking in the sky,

Flew on and on above the plain

And drew my spirit in its train.

I saw a mountain, coronate

With cities populous and great,

Whose habitants, a mighty number,

Lay hid in deep nocturnal slumber,

So that the moon for long dim hours

Leer’d on lone streets and silent tow’rs.

Fair beyond words the mountain stood,

Its base encircled by a wood;

Adown its side a brooklet bright

Ran dancing in the spectral light.

Each city that adorn’d its crest

Seem’d anxious to outvie the rest,

For carven columns, domes, and fanes

Gleam’d rich and lovely o’er the plains.

And now the noon in heav’n stood still

As if no more foreboding ill,

Whereat the throngs aerial knew

That Life at last was in their view;

That the fair mount each gaz’d upon

Was Life, the long-sought Eidolon!

But Io! what rays the scene illume

As dawn intrudes upon the gloom?

The East is hideous with the flare

Of blood-hued light—a garish glare—

While ghastly grey the mountain stands,

The terror of the neighb’ring lands.

The cursed wood of twisted trees

Waves awful talons in the breeze,

And down the slope the oozing stream

Reflects the day with shocking gleam.

Aloft the light of knowledge crawls,

Staining the crumbling city walls

Thro’ which in troops ungainly squirm

The foetid lizard and the worm.

White leprous marble in the light

Shews sculptures that repel and fright,

And many a temple hints the sin

And blasphemy that reign within.

“O Pow’rs of Light and Space and Aidenn,

Is Life with such foul horrors laden?

Pray hide no more the wondrous plan,

But shew the living glory—Man!”

Now on the streets the houses spew

A loathsome pestilence, a crew

Of things I cannot, dare not name,

So vile their form, so black their shame.

And in the sky the leering sun

Nor pities the vague forms that flee

Back to the Night eternally.

“O Moonlit, Mound-mark’d Moor of Death,

Renew thy reign! Thy lethal breath

Is balm elysian to the soul

That sees the light and knows the whole.”

I sought to join the winged train

That plung’d into the dusk again,

But Horror, eating at my mind,

Held my poor falt’ring steps behind.

In dreams I fain would flee the day—

Too late, for I have lost the way!