A happy being in a happy place,
As 'twere a captive from his chains released,
His dungeon and its darkness, there I lay
Nestling, amid the sun-illumined flowers,
Revolving silently the varied scenes,
Grotesque and grim, 'mid which my erring feet
Had stumbled; and a brightness darting in
On my mysterious night-mare, something told
The what and wherefore of the effigies grim--
The wolfish, never-resting, tombless man,
Voicelessly haunting that ancestral home--
Yea of his destiny for evermore
To suffer fearful life-in-death, until
A victim suffer'd from the sons of men,
To soothe the cravings of insatiate hell;
An agony for age undergone--
An agony for ages to be borne,
Hope, still elusive, baffled by despair.