hat pour in forges dank and cold,
Whence glare the eyes of Hell in lust
As Cyclops stem the pyre's glow,
'Mid haunts of sin and purple sheen
Of shales and husks of monsters told
As vultures to both scale and dust.
Then wing they for the western strands
Of bowered vales and lulling dells,
Where silence holds the winds at bay,
And myrtles stir the sylvan air.
There tow'rs and the russet sands
Make fine the tunes of ringing bells
That echo to the skies of gray,
Where phosphorescent lanterns flare.
And twilights of the lofty aisles,
Thro' silver mists and streaks of blood,
Crucifixion looms cold and white;
Oaths of prurient blasphemy
Echo to the sequestered isles;
An ivory pyx that rides the flood
On which fantasms spin their light,
Curse each soul's eternal enemy.
Within a pool where writhing coils
Shape cyphers bold and gorey thought,--
Two shadowed sklayres of Doom and Set!
The foam-dreams of the newly dead
Ascend. To hazards that the oils
Eschewed, haste dryades that were taught
To dance. And, whilst all souls forget
The chasms deep and oriflammed,
The spastic lights of a green room,
Dim torches show the jeweled tombs
Wherein are hid the studded crowns
Of Eastern queens; or, when high-bred
Dames pick from Death's unbroken womb
The coral wreaths and poppy blooms,
Two priestesses in scarlet gowns
Curse loudly as the royal dead
Are strewn with palmy leaves and dyes.
And crimsons adders on the hulls,
Search for toadstools smeared with blood.
And livid lamps where vypers spoon,
As some bad harlot shrieks and cries
Her Nature's sins unto three skulls,
A shameless gnome bathes in hell's flood
The thighs he filched from a gray tomb.

Drawn by the whispers from the wind,
'Mid glories of the hollowed night,
To storm-swept vales and mounts we haste,
And, in monastic halls we see,
Above a greenish gyrus rind,
The flick'ring flames of a light,
Beneath whose subtle, shadowed waste
Squat men and women that would flee
The ghastly words from Vellum told,
Who pluck their eyes and pull their hair,--
Beneath their feet there writhes a worm!
As bludgeons smite a leering soul.
And when a wench that Satan sold
To some old seer, whose head is bare,
And oily snakes in cauldrons squirm,
All blast the sight and curse this shoal,--
Infernal land of Sin and Doom!
Eternal moans and sighs we hear;