'Mid tombs that ghouls in hatred wrought!
To sleep in dank Subjection's shard
'Mid hanuts of purple sins and shales
A Thirst gyre! as bleak, untold,
As ever haunted woman sought
For incubi on scented sward
As bleary owls and vulpine wails
Rake stationed nights and seas forlorn,
Until, when star-linkt domes are red,
And Oceans' shells and sands grow white,
Dusky isles and lights--Twins of the Gloom!
Betray each soul cursed and forsworn;
Or awed, at Twilights' scarlet bed,
When nightshades blot the conjured light
As javels vomit death and doom,
Dank vapours veil the seaward flight
Of Satellites gray 'gainst the night.
Till, eyes in fear peer at profounds
Unfathomed and, in vales unsunned,
See Cyclops battling in the light,
'Mid scarlet foam and gorey sight
Of bloody domes and hybrid hounds
Of Titan's forges, cold, unstunned.
Oh, vain each sinner's prayer of hope!
Alas, alas, all thoughts of future trust!
The bloody lanes of reigning Doom
Are lasting tombs for souls accurst.
When in a pool we lie and mope
As vaulted temples rot in dust,
Vague shapes and forms ascend to spell
Infernal chasms of black gloom.
When crested waves of billowed sea
Are lashed by winds from foreign shoal,
And foam-set breasts are dashed on high
As silence holds the voiceless air,
Unsavoury dreams haunt each lee--
The maw of Hell receives a soul!
A leering fiend blinks at the sky.
Beyond the realm of rulling Care,
Caressed by suns and moons most fair,
We fain would hye, all wrecks, and lie
In dusky forests dells and vales;
Beyond the Asian skies of blue,
Where sports an elf, mayhap a hare,
We fain would haste, each soul, and die,
Unfurl all dreams and pinioned sails,
And sleep unmourned in haunts we knew,
Now wracks and domes stare at each soul,
Giant goddards leak a rubic foam;
Blind forges hold Contagion's breath;
A Morgan longs for earthly home.
'Tis so with hell's eternal shoal
Where skinks eat flesh from wenches' bone;
'Tis thus with us purloined by Death,
Infernal doom that spells a moan.
Ten thousand years was Doom crown'd King;
Sporadic prayers each gnarl'd one lisped;
Despotic sway all subjects curs'd
When Hell was new and Earth unborn:
Now souls of man in torture sing,
Each Idol's glyph by damn'd one's kiss'd.
Who then shall say who is the worst,
A vyper's brood or man forsworn?
Transcriber's Notes:
Spelling has not been altered from the original.
The misprint "mournfnl" on page 31 has been corrected to "mournful."
The unmatched parenthesis on page 76 is presented as in the original.