Joy holds her courts in great Belshazzar's hall,
Where his proud lords attend their monarch's call;
The rarest dainties of the teeming East
Provoke the revel and adorn the feast.
But why, O king,
Why dost thou start, with livid cheek?--why fling
The untasted goblet from thy trembling hand?
Why shake thy joints? thy feet forget to stand?
Why roams thine eye, which seems in wild amaze
To shun some object, yet returns to gaze,
Then shrinks again, appalled, as if the tomb
Had sent a spirit from its inmost gloom?
Awful the horror, when Belshazzar raised
His arm, and pointed where the vision blazed;
For see! enrobed in flame, a mystic shade,
As of a hand, a red right hand displayed,
And, slowly moving o'er the wall, appear
Letters of fate and characters of fear.
In death-like silence grouped the revellers all,
Fixed their glazed eyeballs on the illumined wall.